July 2003: Week Four: This Far and No Further

Back to July 2003

July 22: Bush aide Stephen Hadley is the latest official to take the blame for the President's assertion that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, claiming to have found a CIA memo from October 6, 2002, directed to Condoleezza Rice casting grave doubts on the tale that Niger was supplying Iraq with uranium. Hadley says, "I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue. ...I should have either asked that the 16 words dealing with that subject be stricken or I should have alerted DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) Tenet. And had I done so this would have avoided the whole current controversy. ...I am the senior-most official within the NSC staff directly responsible for the substantive review and clearance of presidential speeches. The president and national security advisor look to me to ensure that the subjective statements in those speeches are the ones in which the president can have confidence. It is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility." He adds that Rice is willing to accept her own share of responsibility for the debacle. Hadley is the Deputy National Security Advisor and reports directly to Rice. Hadley offers to resign, but Bush refuses to accept the offer. The entire affair is an attempt to make peace between the White House and the CIA, which is resentful of White House attempts to blame the agency for its statements about Iraq's uranium purchase attempts.
White House spokesperson Dan Bartlett sidesteps the question of whether Bush will take personal responsibility for the false claim, saying, "He is responsible for his decisions -- the decision of going to war. He takes responsibility for those decisions and the case that he outlined to the public for that rationale to go to war." Chief speechwriter Michael Gerson will later that evening find another, similar memo dated October 5. "Who is it in the White House who was hell-bent on misleading the American people, and why are they still there?" asks Democratic senator Richard Durbin. Circumstantial evidence points most strongly to Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis Libby -- see above items.
Chief speechwriter Michael Gerson asks plaintively, "Why can't we get the CIA to stop regarding the White House as a foreign government?" The answer is clear: when the White House stops trying to pin blame for its own lies and exaggerations on the CIA, and when it stops outing its agents for political revenge against its critics, then the relationship can perhaps begin to heal. The CIA has just begun to assess the potential damage to its network of foreign sources caused by the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson. Everyone she recruited over twenty years, and everyone associated with her cover firm, Brewster Jennings, is now at risk of being compromised. She has submitted her own assessment of the damage likely from her outing to her superiors. (Reuters, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
July 22: CIA sources sent two memos to the White House in October 2002 voicing strong doubts about President Bush's claim, made three months later in the State of the Union address, that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, according to White House officials Stephen Hadley and Dan Bartlett. They claim that one of the two memos was just discovered on July 18. One of the two memos went directly to Condoleezza Rice. Hadley took the blame for the statement hours before he spoke to the press about the memos. Originally the White House tried to shift the blame onto the CIA, whose director, George Tenet, accepted the responsibility but pointed out that the agency had tried to warn Bush officials months before the speech of the claim's dubious nature. Condoleezza Rice and other officials have previously said that no one in the White House was aware of the CIA's objections before the speech. (Washington Post, AP/Buzzflash)
July 22: Addressing the doubts that Iraq ever possessed WMDs, Paul Wolfowitz, on a visit to Iraq, says finding those putative weapons is now a "secondary concern." He says he's more concerned about getting the Iraqi government in place. "I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction," he tells reporters. "I'm concerned about getting Iraq on its feet. I didn't come [to Iraq] on a search for weapons of mass destruction. I'm not saying that getting to the bottom of this WMD issue isn't important. It is important. But it is not of immediate consequence." He continues, "If you could get in a relaxed conversation with Iraqis on that subject they'd say why on earth are you Americans fussing so much about this historical issue when we have real problems here, when Ba'athists are killing us and Ba'athists are threatening us and we don't have electricity and we don't have jobs? Those are the real issues." (CBS, Frank Rich [PDF file])
July 22: Two of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, are killed in heavy fighting in Mosul after a tipster betrays their whereabouts. Various spokespersons, including Ahmad Chalabi and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, say that their deaths will weaken the resistance to American rule in Iraq. The US is considering whether or not to pay the $15 million bounty the government has offered for their deaths or captures. (CBS, CNN)
July 22: Bush press secretary Scott McClellan refuses to admit that White House officials leaked the name of a senior covert CIA operative to the press, saying repeatedly, "This is not the way this White House operates." Valerie Plame Wilson, wife of former ambassador and whistleblower Joseph Wilson, was named by two unnamed "senior administration officials" as a CIA agent specializing in WMDs to journalist Robert Novak, who published the information on July 14. (Rove's sources are later identified as Karl Rove and Richard Armitage -- see above items). Newsday was able to confirm Plame's employment with the CIA a week later. It is plain that Plame was blown as an act of revenge against Wilson, who exposed the administration's lies about the supposed purchase of uranium by Iraq from Niger. Nixon White House counsel John Dean writes, "[W]hat has surfaced is repulsive. If I thought I had seen dirty political tricks as nasty and vile as they could get at the Nixon White House, I was wrong. The American Prospect's observation that 'we are very much into Nixon territory here' with this story is an understatement. Indeed, this is arguably worse. Nixon never set up a hit on one of his enemies' wives."
On this same day, her husband Joseph Wilson tells the Today show's Katie Couric, "It's a -- it's a breach of national security. My understanding is it may, in fact, be a violation of American law." Indeed, it is likely a violation of both the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act of 1982. But instead of enforcing the law and prosecuting the two administration officials who "outed" Plame, McClellan says that neither "this President or this White House operates" in such a fashion, and adds, "[T]here is absolutely no information that has come to my attention or that I have seen that suggests that there is any truth to that suggestion. And, certainly, no one in this White House would have given authority to take such a step." (By exploiting the leak as the administration demonstrably has, it opens itself up to federal conspiracy charges as well. Under the law, any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government is conspiracy to defraud the government.)
Howard Dean terms it "the most vicious leak I have seen in over 40 years of government-watching," and warns, "Failure to act to address it will reek of a cover-up or, at minimum, approval of the leak's occurrence -- and an invitation to similar revenge upon administration critics." Democratic senator John Rockefeller calls the leak "vile" and "highly dishonorable. Fellow Democratic senator Dick Durbin accuses the White House of attacking anyone who dares criticize their rationale for war. And Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle calls for an investigation. (FindLaw, FindLaw, Frank Rich [PDF file])
July 22: Senator Richard Durbin, who charged on July 17 that an administration official insisted that the reference to Iraq's nuclear program be retained in Bush's State of the Union address over CIA objections, claims that the administration is trying to have him removed from the US Senate Intelligence Committee in retaliation for his charges. He says that the White House is spreading a bogus story that he had disclosed classified information regarding Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction. "The White House allegations...were, in fact, false, and inaccurate," Durbin says on the Senate floor. "Sadly, what we have here is a continuing pattern by this White House. If any member of this Senate...questions this White House policy...be prepared for the worst." The Bush administration denies the charges, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican, said no one had asked him to seek the removal of Durbin from the committee. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle spoke in defense of Durbin, saying, "It's outrageous that anybody would question his integrity or question his efforts. ...I don't know who is trying to intimidate him, but I know that efforts are being made from various sources to undermine his credibility." (Reuters)
July 22: Public interest group Democracy 21 publishes the first comprehensive overview of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's interlocking corporate and political money-making and fundraising entities. His money operations raised over $12 million in 2000-2002. DeLay has gone far beyond the usual reelection committee/PAC structure. He has created a maze of interlocking fundraising and consulting operations, each tailored to address a certain goal or take advantage of particular donation laws. He was one of the first to create independent 527 groups that could, at that time, raise and spend campaign money without disclosing sources. He has focused on raising millions through state GOP organizations, which operate under looser campaign laws than do federal committees. He has demanded that senior Republican lawmakers raise $100,000 each and give the money to 10 vulnerable House incumbents. "If you want to understand the power and influence of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in Washington, you have to understand the role played by DeLay Inc., his multimillion-dollar money machine," says Democracy 21 president Fred Wertheimer. "Tom DeLay is the king of congressional influence-money. In DeLay's world, the operating rule is you have to pay to play." Many donors give "smaller" amounts to a number of different DeLay-run committees, in order to get around donation limits. His single biggest donor is a Texas home manufacturer; tobacco companies are three of his top 20 contributors; energy companies such as Kansas's Westar are big contributors.
Westar is worthy of note because of e-mails from corporate executives that discussed obtaining "a seat at the [congressional negotiating] table" by giving money to political committees chosen by DeLay and other GOP lawmakers. Westar gave $25,000 to a DeLay PAC in May 2002, and a month later Westar executives joined DeLay at a two-day retreat at the Homestead resort in Virginia. Although DeLay denied ever asking Westar for money, he only met with company officials after they made their donations, and subsequently he backed a provision in the GOP energy bill that Westar keenly wanted. The provision was deleted after Westar came under federal investigation. (As it turns out, any corporation could send its executives to the Homestead retreat, providing it coughed up $25,000 beforehand.) One group, TRMPAC, claims that professional fundraisers, not DeLay's associates, had control over who was tapped. Those fundraisers include DeLay's daughter, Danielle Ferro. Political watchdog groups all over the country believe DeLay is getting away with political murder in his fast, loose, take-no-prisoners shakedowns for money, particularly in using soft money to pay for political expenses, and illegally funnelling corporate money into political campaigns. Texans for Public Justice director Craig McDonald says DeLay is "using his access to special interests who want access to Congress, and he's leveraging that to control the politics and agenda of the Texas legislature." (It is no coincidence that Texas is revamping its Congressional district map to suit DeLay and other right-wing interests.) One tobacco official says that his corporation gives so much to DeLay because of the access their money buys them to the second most powerful man in the House of Representatives. Corporations have given to congressional leaders, but rarely has a leader been so explicit about rewarding friends and punishing opponents, this official says. DeLay's idea of access is pretty expansive, including invitations to select golfing tournaments in Florida and Puerto Rico, charitable retreats at the tony Ocean Reef Club, and other luxury events. "You have more quality time with Tom," says Dan Mattoon of the lobbying shop Podesta-Mattoon. "You feel like you have a reasonable opportunity to bring up any political issues a client's interested in." He isn't shy about contributing money he raises to other Republican candidates. He also recognizes the advantages of grass-roots mobilization; one of his groups, called "sTOMP," poured volunteers into key districts for the last three days of the 2002 elections. (Washington Post)
July 22: Ex-POW Jessica Lynch returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, West Virginia, and is given a hero's welcome. She says to the crowd of welcoming friends and neighbors, "I'm proud to be a soldier in the Army. I'm proud to have served with the 507th. I'm happy that some soldiers I served with made it home alive. It hurts that some of my company didn't." She also says she is "thankful to several Iraqi citizens who helped save my life while I was in their hospital." (Guardian)

July 23: A group of family members of 9/11 victims are told by a senior FBI agent that the agency had no open investigations into any of the people involved in the attacks. The next day, the same family members are told by staff director Eleanor Hill that the FBI had 14 open investigations into individuals who had contact with the hijackers while they were in the United States. (New York Observer)
July 23: Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio tells the Washington Times that no proof was ever seen by the international community that Iraq possessed the capability to restart its nuclear weapons program. "There was a presumption that there was a nuclear program going on," she clarifies. Palacio, speaking for her country, is solidly behind the Bush administration, but warns that the US must do more to ensure peace and stability in Iraq. (Washington Times)
July 23: Representatives of The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Government Accountability Project (GAP) ask Congress to investigate, and repeal, an executive order signed by President Bush that gives sweeping powers to US oil companies operating in Iraq. They claim that Bush far overreached a May 22, 2003, UN resolution that was designed to protect Iraqi oil revenues for humanitarian purposes when he signed an executive order that could place US corporations above the law for any activities "related to" Iraqi oil, either in Iraq or domestically. Bush signed Executive Order 13303 the same day that the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1483, which sets up a development fund, from Iraqi oil revenues, for "humanitarian purposes." "This order reveals the true motivation for the present occupation: absolute power for US corporate interests over Iraqi oil," says IPS Senior Researcher Jim Vallette. "This is the smoking gun that proves the Bush administration always intended to free corporate investments, not the Iraqi people." Tom Devine, legal director of the GAP, says, "In terms of legal liability, the Executive Order cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law. It is a blank check for corporate anarchy, potentially robbing Iraqis of both their rights and their resources." The order declares that "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void," with respect to the Development Fund for Iraq and "all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein." (CorpWatch)
July 23: An Army Times poll shows that 60% of its readers agree with the statement that Bush's invitation for the Iraqi guerrillas to "bring it on" against the American military was "irresponsible and unnecessarily placed the lives of U.S. troops in even greater danger." (Army Times/Alternet)

Pentagon moves to slash military pay and benefits

July 23: The Pentagon announces a troop rotation plan for US military personnel deployed in Iraq. Most of the newly deployed troops will face a yearlong deployment. A new Army brigade (about 5,000 troops) "built around the high-tech 'Stryker' armored vehicle" will be sent, along with "thousands more Army National Guard soldiers." The beleagured Third Army Infantry Division will not be sent home for an "indefinite" period, due to fierce Iraqi resistance and the refusal of other countries to send troops to Iraq in support of the US. Meanwhile, a number of proposals that would have added pay and benefits increases to the 2004 defense budget have been stricken, termed "wasteful and unnecessary" by the Republican-controlled Congress, including:
- cancelling a proposal to increase the benefit to families of soldiers who die on active duty from $6000 to $12,000;
- slashing recent increases in monthly imminent-danger pay from $225 to $150, and family-separation allowances from $250 to $100 for troops serving in combat zones;
- refusing to consider a tax break for military personnel that is described as "a boon to military homeowners, reservists who travel long distances for training and parents deployed to combat zones, among others;"
- approving pay raises for some higher ranks but capping pay raises for E-1s, E-2s, and O-1s at 2%, well below the average raise of 4.1%;
- accepting a $1.5 billion cut in the military construction request, which would have been largely used for building and renovating military residences, base housing, and other essential facilities. A Democratic proposal to restore $1 billion of the $1.5 billion cut by reducing recent tax cuts for the 200,000 Americans who earn more than $1 million a year (their tax break would drop from $88,300 to $83,500) was defeated.
(Army Times/Alternet)
July 23: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz complains that the media reportage in the Middle East is dominated by "Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya and some other unhelpful foreign broadcasts." Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau chief, Hafez Al-Mirazi, says in response, "When you hear that from someone who's as important in this administration as the information minister was in Iraq, it's really scary." He is later asked at a conference, "Whose side is al-Jazeera on?" and replies, "The sad thing for me is that some of the American networks behaved in similar ways as government-controlled stations in the Arab world before 9/11. They used to call us the Israeli-US-backed network. We were suspected of trying to divide the Arab world. The Americans were so positive about us before 9/11, but afterward, when we gave both sides, they behaved the same way the other government-controlled media in the Arab world did to us." (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
July 23: Republicans submit over 110% of the signatures required to force a recall of Governor Gray Davis. Though over 300,000 of the signatures submitted are found to be false, enough signatures are validated to force an election. Lieutenant Govenor Cruz Bustamente announces the recall election for October 7; the state GOP successfully met its goal of having the recall months before the Democratic primaries of February 2004, when presumably more Democrats will go to the polls. Allegations of fraud and political "shenanigans" fly from both sides; some Democratic unions are alleged to have tried to block the recall efforts, and Democrats in turn accuse the GOP of running a recall election funded by the national Republican Party and managed by the Bush administration. The recall is turned into a media circus when actor Arnold Schwarzenegger announces that he will enter the race as a Republican. GOP congressman Darrell Issa, who sunk millions of his own money into the recall, angrily drops out of the race after presuming he would be the GOP nominee to challenge Davis. (Wikipedia, Laura Flanders)
July 23: George W. Bush defaces flags by autographing them during a campaign visit to a Livonia, Michigan defense plant. According to the US Code governing the treatment of the American flag, "The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature." (AP/AmericaBlog)

July 23: A lawsuit alleging conspiracy against Senator Hillary Clinton by Gennifer Flowers will be allowed to proceed. Clinton succeeded in getting a defamation charge dropped, but she, along with former advisors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, will have to face charges by Flowers that they helped discredit her story of an illicit affair with Bill Clinton. In 1992, Flowers went to the Star tabloid to tell her story, and provided audio tapes to document her claim; the tapes later proved to have been doctored. Judicial Watch is representing Flowers. (Newsday)

9/11 report censored by administration before its release

July 24: The joint House and Senate Intelligence Committees release their 900-page report on the 9/11 hijackings. 28 pages of it are redacted as being too sensitive for public consumption; many believe the section refers largely to the Saudi Arabian connections with the terrorist attacks. (One official who has read the redacted pages says that they delineate "a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government.... If the people in the administration trying to link Iraq to al-Qaeda had one-one-thousandth of the stuff that the twenty-eight pages has linking a foreign government to al-Qaeda, they would have been in good shape." 46 Democratic senators ask that the redacted pages be released, as does the Republican former head of the committee, Richard Shelby; the Bush administration refuses.) The report indicates that the attacks may well have been prevented had the US intelligence community been more competent and willing to work with each other. The report also cites lapses by both the Clinton and Bush administrations as being partially responsible for the failure to prevent the attacks, and cites evidence showing the Bush administration knew much more than it has admitted about the possibility of terrorist attacks. The committee was unable to report on how well the Bush administration handled the information provided to it, because the administration refused to cooperate with the committee in revealing what it did and didn't know before 9/11. Among other documents, the administration refused to provide copies of the August 6, 2001 Presidential daily briefing (detailed elsewhere in this site), nor would it provide any material from the National Security Council. Senator Charles Schumer says that the White House has "a systematic strategy of coddling and cover-up when it comes to the Saudis.... The Administration's whole policy toward Saudi Arabia is backward and needs to make a 180-degree turn immediately. Declassifying the 28-page section would be a good first step." (Congressional Reports [the actual report itself], Washington Post, The Nation, Reuters, Charles Schumer, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)

"[The decision to censor the 28 pages] doesn't have a damn thing to do with protecting 'intelligence' sources. ...It has to do with protecting the Bush family and their retainers from unbelievable embarrassment and political questions about the money poisoning of our foreign policy and the oil contamination of our intelligence apparatus." -- Greg Palast (Greg Palast/Buzzflash)

July 24: It is becoming increasingly clear that Iran is the next target of US hardliners. The Pentagon, under the leadership of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, is pushing for "massive covert operations against the Iranian government." Some opposition is forming in the State Department, largely because the Pentagon wants to ally itself with Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen Khalq, a terrorist group formerly affiliated with Saddam Hussein. There is also a move in the Pentagon to bring the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi, back into power, a move backed by members of Israel's hardline Likud party. On May 6, Israeli-born Meyrav Wurmser, whose husband David is in the Bush administration, told a conference at the American Enterprise Institute, "Our fight against Iraq was only one battle in a long war. It would be ill-conceived to think that we can deal with Iraq alone. ...We must move on, and faster. ...It was a grave error to send [U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad] to secret meetings with representatives of the Iranian government in recent weeks. ...Rather than coming as victors who should be feared and respected rather than loved, we are still engaged in old diplomacy, in the kind of politics that led to the attacks of September 11." Six days after the speech, the Bush administration broke off relations with the representatives of Iranian President Mohamed Khatami over Iraq and Afghanistan, and began floating unsupported accusations that Iran's government is closely tied to al-Qaeda. (In These Times)
July 24: Relatives of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks are disappointed and frustrated with the 9/11 report recently released by Congress. Carie Lemack says, "I was hoping we'd gain more information, but it doesn't seem like we're getting much more. ...I feel like, in an era where we're holding CEOs accountable for losing $3 million, I'd hope we'd want to hold people accountable for losing 3,000 lives. But the administration has still chosen to classify the part about who funded the terrorists. And the fact that President Bush has chosen to classify it for what he says is national security makes me question just whose security he is protecting: our nation's or the Saudis'? ...It would be nice to see people stop passing the buck and make some real changes that will protect Americans. We know for a fact that mace was used on a plane and there are reports of a gun on at least one flight. To me, it seems like that would have been the job of airport security to stop it. Also, if one plane had hit a tower already, and the other was bearing down, why were people in the other tower told to go back to their desks? And why weren't [military] planes scrambled before the plane hit the Pentagon? Thousands of lives could have been saved. There are still a lot of questions. To hold no one accountable for any of these mishaps really surprises me. ...We've known since 1995 that they wanted to fly planes into buildings —- specifically, the World Trade Center. They [intelligence officials] had the information. They chose not to respond to it. So, who made that choice? ...It is surprising to us that it has fallen on our shoulders -— the victims' families—to be the ones to pursue the changes to make Americans feel safe." (Newsweek/MSNBC)
July 24: Senator Charles Schumer demands a probe into the White House leak that identified Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent. He also wants an investigation into the handling of the Iraqi-Niger uranium intelligence, and how that was used to perpetrate war in Iraq. Schumer also wants the administration to work to get Saudi Arabia to release 9/11 figure Omar al-Bayoumi to US custody; although the FBI dismissed al-Bayoumi as a possible terrorist suspect in January 2000, the newly released 9/11 report names him as a key associate of two of the hijackers.
Unbeknownst to Schumer, the CIA is considering requesting an investigation from the Jusice Department. A CIA attorney lets the chief of DOJ's counterespionage know that it is reviewing the Robert Novak column for any criminal actions regarding Novak's outing of Plame. (AP/New York Times, Charles Schumer, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 24: On a 50-46 party line vote, the Senate votes to keep the homeland security advisory process secret and unavailable for public inquiry. The Department of Homeland Security has already come under fire for operating in a corrupt and ineffective manner; instead of dealing with the concerns, the administration and the GOP-controlled Congress move to keep DHS actions secret. (Stephen Pizzo/Daily Misleader, Federation of American Scientists)
July 24: Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, is aghast that anyone could doubt the administration's take on Iraq: "How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?" He reads a statement from the NIE that he asserts proves the administration's rationale for war in Iraq: "If left unchecked, [Iraq] probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." He fails to reconcile his statement with his claim of March 16, when he flatly asserts on Meet the Press, "We believe [Iraq] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." (Note the difference between the March claim that Iraq already has nuclear weapons and the current claim that Iraq "probably will have" nuclear weapons by the end of the decade.) He cites the prewar NIE, which has been widely discredited, as providing proof of Iraqi WMD programs, which it does not; claims that proof of Hussein's plans have been ignored by the press; and insinuates that anyone who thinks otherwise is not a good American. (Slate, Washington Times, Progressive, AlterNet)
July 24: Colin McMillan, Bush's nominee for Secretary of the Navy, dies from a gunshot wound. Officials believe that McMillan committed suicide. McMillan ran Permian Exploration Corporation, an oil company, served as Bush's campaign chairman in New Mexico during the 2000 election, and served as Assistant Secretary of Defense under the first Bush administration. (FindLaw)
July 24: Kellogg Brown & Root, in partnership with UK construction group Mowlem, is poised to receive a £4 billion private contract to upgrade and provide services to British Army garrisons within Britain. KB&R is a subsidiary of Halliburton, and has already been awarded multiple contracts with the US military. Former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney still receives an annual $1 million in "deferred compensation" from the company. (Guardian)

July 25: According to the Washington Post, Congress's 9/11 report shows that Bush was warned much more specifically about the 9/11 attack than his administration has previously acknowledged, and that "incontrovertible evidence" showing that the Saudi Arabian government provided financial support for terrorist living in the United States exists, though the CIA has refused to allow the publication of evidence showing specific ties to Saudi government officials due to national security concerns. The report also states that the investigative committee received little support from the Bush administration in trying to ascertain just what was and wasn't known about the terrorist attacks in Washington before they occurred. Deputy national security adviser Steven Hadley told the panel that the National Security Council held four deputy committee meetings between May and the end of July 2001 in an effort to adopt a more aggressive strategy regarding al-Qaeda. The review was completed on September 4, 2001; Bush had not reviewed the proposal before September 11. The committee also unsuccessfully sought budget information from the Office of Management and Budget to determine where in the Bush administration the decision was made not to provide more funding for counterterrorism activities. CIA Director George Tenet said in a session on June 18, 2002, that he had told other members of the administration that his counterterrorism budget would be as much as $1 billion short each year for the next five years. "We told that to everybody downtown for as long as anybody would listen and never got to first base," Tenet told the panel. A former member of the Intelligence Committee, Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi, says, "We were never able to get much of the material we requested from the National Security Council. ...The nation was not well-served by the administration's failure to provide this critical information." (Washington Post)
July 25: The Justice Department opposes a proposed ban on the "sneak and peek" provisions of the Patriot Act, which allow law enforcement officials to search a home or business without a warrant. The legislation, overwhelmingly approved by the US House of Representatives on July 22, would roll back a key provision of the anti-terrorism law adopted after the 9/11 attacks and deny funding to the Justice Department for "sneak and peek" investigations. If it becomes law, the legislation, "would have a devastating effect on the United States' ongoing efforts to detect and prevent terrorism, as well as to combat other serious crimes," complains Assistant Attorney General William Moschella. Moschella claims that the provisions are necessary to combat terrorism, and adds that the Justice Department shared the commitment of the House "to preserving American liberties while we seek to protect American lives." (Reuters/Washington Post, Mark Crispin Miller)
July 25: Of the Palestinian "road map to peace" currently floundering in limbo among disputes between Palestine, Israel, and the US, Bush intones, "security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace." (AllHatNoCattle)
July 25: By a single vote, the US House approves the smallest increase in funding for the keystone education program Head Start in decades. (The Bush administration and the Republican Senate actually proposed cutting funds from Head Start in the year's budget.) Democrats insist that the legislation, which also turns over control of the program to the states, will ruin one of the most successful education programs ever seen. "For the first time in 35 years, the Republicans have turned Head Start into a partisan issue," says Democrat George Miller, the senior Democrat on the committee with jurisdiction over this issue. "They have blindly applied their fierce anti-government ideology regardless of the fact that poor children will suffer from it. They are claiming they need to fix something that is not broken. This is the third strike in the latest Republican assault on poor children -- denying the parents of 12 million poor children the expanded child tax credit, failing to adequately fund key education reforms, and now destroying Head Start. What kind of program are they running?" Miller continues, "Under this bill, states could increase class size, reduce program hours, exclude all three year-olds, increase child-teacher ratios, use unproven curricula, run half-year programs, or decrease early education services. For the first time under any Administration, Republican or Democratic, they would cut back on the total number of children served. The fate of Head Start is now in the hands of the United States Senate where I would hope that they reject this callous and dangerously misguided plan." Unfortunately, a similar bill will eventually pass the Senate. (Committee on Education and the Workforce, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
July 25: Secret Service agent Brian Marr delivers what has to be one of the most ludicrous rationales for restricting anti-Bush protesters to so-called "free speech zones." Marr insists that such restrictions are actually for the protesters' own protection: "These individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support or nonsupport that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we set these places up, so we can make sure that they have the right of free speech, but, two, we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way." (South Carolina Progressive Network, San Francisco Chronicle)

US plans to move against North Korea leaked

July 26: News of a plan to prepare for a possible war with North Korea leaks out. The plan, known as "Plan #5030," was developed by the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the direction of Admiral Thomas Fargo, and contains elements so provocative that it could impel North Korea to open hostilities itself. Administration insiders are highly critical of the plan, and say it "blurs the line between war and peace. " The plan would give commanders in the region authority to conduct maneuvers -- before a war has started -- to drain North Korea's limited resources, strain its military, and perhaps sow enough confusion that North Korean generals might turn against the country's leader, Kim Jong Il. "some of the things [Fargo] is being asked to do," says a senior U.S. official, "are, shall we say, provocative." Many officials believe the plan is designed to destabilize the government and drive Kim Jong Il from power by conducting military operations that will drain the country's military resources. According to news reports, "[o]ne scenario in the draft involves flying RC-135 surveillance flights even closer to North Korean airspace, forcing Pyongyang to scramble aircraft and burn scarce jet fuel. Another option: U.S. commanders might stage a weeks-long surprise military exercise, designed to force North Koreans to head for bunkers and deplete valuable stores of food, water, and other resources. The current draft of 5030 also calls for the Pentagon to pursue a range of tactical operations that are not traditionally included in war plans, such as disrupting financial networks and sowing disinformation." Critics believe that the North Korean government, unpredictable and violent as it has proven to be, may well respond aggressively, forcing hostilities between itself and the US. (US News/Information Clearinghouse, Democratic Underground)
July 26: Senior Saudi officials have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations that may have helped finance the September 11 attacks in 2001, according to the New York Times, which cites reports from people who have read a 28-page deleted section of the Congressional report on the hijackings released on Thursday by a joint House and Senate intelligence committee. The Times says the section focuses almost exclusively Saudi Arabia. The Bush administration's refusal to allow the chapter's disclosure has angered many in Congress, where some members have said the administration's desire to protect the ruling Saudi family has prevented the public from learning crucial facts about the attacks. The Saudi government harshly condemns the reports, and publicly demands that the suppressed pages be released to clear its name: Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal says on July 29, "Everybody is having a field day and casting aspersions about Saudi Arabia. My concern is that the good name of Saudi Arabia is not tarnished." (Reuters, AP/ABC News)

Kay's ISG finds no WMDs; Curveball proven a fraud

July 26: In Washington, chief WMD hunter David Kay gives a disheartening report: his group is finding nothing. Kay wants George Tenet to put the CIA on the job of finding out if, as rumor has it, Saddam Hussein had shipped said WMDs across the border in the weeks before the invasion, perhaps into Syria. Former WMD chief General James Marks said earlier that he knew about truck convoys rumbling across the border, but Kay cannot improve on Marks's statement that for all he knew, the trucks contained Toys 'R' Us bicycles. The next day, Tenet brings Kay to the Presidential Daily Briefing. The woman in charge of the PDB tells Kay, "We're glad you're briefing this morning, because it means we can reuse this material. We're getting sort of thin, and we can reuse it." Kay is surprised to hear that PDB information is not so urgent and relevant that it isn't being used immediately. He is more surprised to find that he will be delivering a briefing himself. Kay reports to Bush and his coterie that Iraq is, unsurprisingly, a mess. "The biggest mistake we made was to let looting and lawlessness break out," Kay says. "Some of this evidence is beginning to shape up as if they had a just-in-time policy," explaining about his idea of "surge protection," a Soviet concept that has a government stockpile raw materials for WMDs with an eye towards quick production if need be. Iraq may have had the raw materials for chemical and biological weapons, but no stockpiles have been found as yet. Bush tells Kay to keep at it. Kay comes away shocked at Bush's lack of inquisitiveness. Kay is used to being asked probing, challenging questions; Bush seems lackadaisical and uninterested. "He trusted me more than I trusted me," Kay recalls later. "If the positions had been reversed, and this is primarily personality, I think, I would have probed. I would have asked. I would have said, 'What have you done? What haven't you done? Why haven't you done it?' You know, 'Are you getting the support out of [the Defense Department]? The soft spots. Didn't do it."
Kay had been forced to start from scratch. The records from his predecessors, the 75th Mobile Exploitation Task Force, were unavailable. He couldn't tell what sites had been visited or what Iraqis had been interviewed. And Iraqi ammunition sites were still unsecured. "The military just blew this off," he says. Publicly, of course, Kay was optimistic, telling the press he expects to have a "substantial body of evidence" for Iraq's WMDs within six months. But in his private communications with Tenet and Tenet's deputy, John McLaughlin, he is increasingly pessimistic. Every element previously considered relevant -- the aluminum tubes, the mobile bioweapons labs, the chemical weapons depots -- were coming up empty.
The aluminum tubes were the first to go. It took Kay's team little time to see that the tubes, formerly considered vital parts of Hussein's nuclear program, were just what they were said to be -- missile tubes for conventional rockets. (Shortly thereafter, the infamous tubes would be stolen and sold on the street for drainpipes.) The story behind the high-strength tubes was consistent from Iraqi scientist to Iraqi scientist: the tubes were there because of the rocket propellant. The propellant should have been changed for a propellant more suitable for rocket launches, but because it had been bought from one of Hussein's cronies, it could not be changed out. So the designers decided to lower the mass of the rockets by using stronger tubes. "We had this down," Kay later says. "The system was corrupt." As for the tubes issue, "it was an absolute fraud." And an inspection of the highly suspect Tuwaitha nuclear facility outside Baghdad found decaying infrastructure, aging machine tools, and other equipment that obviously hadn't been used for years. All of the Iraqi nuclear scientists Kay's ISG interviewed told the same story, of a nuclear program dormant since 1991. No records of any nuclear fuel purchases -- including of Nigeran uranium -- were ever found.
The mobile biological weapons labs didn't stand up to scrutiny, either. It took Hamish Killip, a veteran British weapons inspector who specializes in chemical and biological weapons, about a minute to pass a preliminary judgment on the labs. They weren't, he recalls, "a proper piece of work." The assemblage was poor, the welds were substandard, the materials were inferior. There was no way they could have been used for cooking up microbes. "You'd have better luck putting a couple of dustbins on the back of a truck and brewing it in there," he says.
The bioweapons lab story comes from a single source, the Iraqi defector code-named Curveball. Once Kay's ISG inspectors were able to see for themselves the source of Curveball's information, they quickly realized that Curveball was nothing but a garden-variety liar. He had called himself one of Hussein's top engineers, a project manager at the Chemical and Engineering Design Center, but his records showed he had graduated at the bottom -- not the top, as he claimed -- of his graduating class, and far from being a manager, he was a low-level trainee. He claimed to have worked on top-secret bioweapons labs in 1997, but in reality, he had been fired in 1995. By 1997, he was a Baghdad taxi driver. His friends called him a "great liar," a "con artist," and a "rat." An ISG member recalls, "They were saying, 'This guy? You've got to be kidding.'" German intelligence had always told the US that Curveball refused to talk to the Americans because he couldn't speak English and hated Americans. But Kay's team found his parents, living in a middle-class neighborhood in Baghdad. According to his parents, he loves Americans and speaks fluent English. They even show the inspectors Curveball's old room -- festooned with posters of American pop stars.
Kay and his team interviewed dozens of Iraqis who claimed to know where chemical weapons were stored; not one of them proved to know anything. Kay's people combed the records from Hussein's government: nothing.
One last piece of Bush's evidentiary claims to Iraq's "imminent threat" collapses under scrutiny: the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which Bush warned Americans could be used to carry payloads of biological or chemical toxins against American targets. "We knew the range, navigation, and payload capability," Kay recalls. "There was no way this was a threat to anyone."
Kay is amazed at the lack of reaction from Bush to all of this. Though Kay is being gentle in his assessments, he is systematically gutting the entire structure of Bush's justification for his invasion of Iraq, and Bush doesn't seem to care. "I'm not sure I've spoken to anyone at that level who seemed less inquisitive," Kay later recalls. "He was interested but not posing any pressing questions." He doesn't ask Kay, are you sure of your facts? He doesn't ask about the prospects of finding WMDs in the future. He doesn't ask if it is possible Iraq's WMDs had been spirited away or hidden. All he asks of Kay is what Kay needs. Patience, Kay responds. He has been on the job only five or six weeks. Bush replies unconcernedly that he has a world of patience. Following Bush's lead, none of the other participants in the briefing, even the normally belligerent Rumsfeld, ask any serious questions of Kay. After the meeting, Kay is puzzled and dismayed. "I cannot stress too much," he recalls, "that the president was the one in the room who was the least unhappy and the least disappointed about the lack of WMDs. I came out of the Oval Office uncertain as to how to read the president. Here was an individual who was oblivious to the problems created by the failure to find the WMDs. Or was this an individual who was completely at peace with himself on the decision to go to war, who didn't question that, and who was totally focused on the here and now and what was to come?"
After the meeting, Dick Cheney, with his chief of staff Lewis Libby, pulls Kay aside. He is very interested in the possibility of Iraq having possibly transported its WMD materials to Syria. Kay says, "If things went across the border, we can't go across the borders." Tenet was on it, he adds. Cheney asks if the materials and stockpiles might have been transported into Lebanon, into the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold. Cheney seems convinced that Hezbollah has Hussein's WMDs. Kay is mystified. "Don't ask me, ask the Israelis," he says. They would know. Kay finds that Cheney, through his deputy Lewis Libby, has a sheaf of raw intelligence reports, mostly NSA communications intercepts. Like most of their ilk, they are maddeningly vague, with snippets of interesting information, but unclear and contradictory. Kay is amazed that Cheney is poring over raw intelligence reports. He and Libby are acting like amateur intelligence analysts, looking for clues to support their own conclusions. "Cheney had a stock of interpretations and facts that he thought proved a case and he wanted to be sure that you examined them," Kay later recalls. It was very sort of in the weeds, detailed, evidentiary questions, and not about what I had said, but about what he knew, that he wanted to know a little more." It is clear that Cheney is building a case against Syria and perhaps Lebanon, at least in his own mind. That same day, he gives essentially the same briefing to Colin Powell. After the briefing, Powell gives Kay his personal e-mail address for Kay to use to contact him. Kay is flabbergasted: Powell has given him a public America Online address, which he knows is about as secure as skywriting. "Here I am sitting in the CIA headquarters," Kay muses. "I'm going to send something to an AOL account?"
Another "lead" from Cheney causes Kay and his staffers to break out in derisive laughter. Cheney's aides forward a photo to Kay and the ISG with the note that the tunnel in the Iraqi hillside pictured in the photo might be the location of WMDs. Kay and his staffers instantly identify the dig as a common farming practice in Iraq, a trench for watering cows. "Anyone who has spent any time on the ground in Iraq immediately would recognize these as cuts that the local population made to get to ground water for their animals," Kay says later. "We reported back that we had looked at it and it was not what you thought it was. There was no point humiliating them."
And Kay's time is also being wasted by Paul Wolfowitz, who is still hot on proving the allegation that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague months before the attacks. Wolfowitz bombarded Kay's ISG with requests for follow-up. "Oh sh*t," Kay says, "why waste time on this?" He realizes that Wolfowitz is still peddling the crackpot theories of neoconservative academic Laurie Mylroie. He passes along the requests from Wolfowitz to his team, but they find nothing linking Iraq to any group remotely affiliated with al-Qaeda. In fact, in the following weeks, Kay continues to find nothing of import. The biggest reaction he receives is an increasing disconnect from Tenet, who doesn't want to keep hearing Kay's bad news. Both Tenet and McLaughlin, Kay believes, are in denial. "I became the turd on the table," Kay ruefully recalls. (Bob Woodward, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 26: Republican Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, says that the Bush administration should acknowledge that efforts to rebuild Iraq will cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars over the next few years. Lugar says that the White House understands there is a big price tag for rebuilding Iraq, "[b]ut they do not wish to discuss that." Lugar estimates that it will take $30 billion or more to get Iraq back on a solid footing. (Reuters/New York Times)
July 26: In an op-ed in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Tribune, retired colonel Leon Hunt, who was the original desk officer for Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan when the US Central Command from the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force was created, writes, "If Saddam is alive and gloating, it is because the political ramifications and consequences not only were not well considered in advance; all who urged more appropriate measures to convincingly and completely defang and box Saddam Hussein were chided and denigrated. Included were great and wonderful soldier/statesmen like former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak, Gen. Wesley Clark, and any and all others who suggested otherwise. [Bush] even fired his own outstanding Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, and his top deputy for daring to point out the cost of postwar operations. Now the piper is being paid. Rightfully in American democracy questions are being raised that should have been asked and answered before his premature commitment to war exposed a bumbling, lying administration. These questions must be asked; otherwise, we will never know the lessons we need to learn from this conflict. There is no spin that partisan politicians can put on this Iraqi debacle that we are in. Saddam Hussein survives not in spite of but because of this administration's foolhardy rush to war in a situation where the same results could have been achieved at much less loss of treasure, goodwill and faith in the integrity and capabilities of our president and his administration." (Star-Tribune)
July 26: Republican congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian from Texas, gives an impassioned speech on the floor of the House against the Department of Homeland Security. Paul notes that the new department will cause massive bureaucratic entanglements among the 22 Federal agencies and 200,000 Federal employees affected by the change, the new department will cost at least $3 billion, most of which will be essentially wasted, and will result in absolutely no measurable improvement in security for the United States. Unfortunately, Paul's predictions are all too accurate. (Ron Paul/Karen Balkin)

July 27: Susan Peacock, whose husband is deployed as a military policeman in Iraq, is warned not to ask too many questions or make negative comments by the group leaders of the 400th Military Police Battalion Family Readiness Group. Peacock tried vainly to get information about her husband's status after she heard news reports that his unit had been exposed to enemy fire on the news. She e-mailed other family members of the unit about her experience, and received an e-mail from the FRG that said, in part, "OK this has gone far enough! ...[C]ertain people are getting their soldiers in trouble." She was warned that the unit's e-mail list had been sent to the Pentagon "for possible security violations and will be closely monitored." An Army spokesperson said that no one in Peacock's unit was injured, and that families have a right not to be troubled by disturbing and unattributed news such as Peacock's. The same spokesperson later backed off, saying the Army had to play "hardball" with spouses like Peacock to avoid possible security breaches, and that no one was in trouble with the Pentagon. (Washington Post)
July 27: Iraqi civilians accuse the US Army's Task Force 20 of indiscriminately murdering innocent Iraqis as part of its putative hunt for Saddam Hussein and his son Ali. At least eleven Iraqis with no discernible connections to the Hussein regime are killed by members of the task force outside of the home of Sheikh Rabiah Muhamed al-Habib in the Mansur district of Baghdad. Two Iraqis are killed when they fail to stop immediately upon approaching a roadblock. Three more, a disabled Iraqi man and his wife and teenage son, are fired upon when they turn down a street approaching the roadblock; the man is killed immediately, and his wife and son, injured by gunfire, are taken by US soldiers and have not heard from again. By the time the third civilian had been killed, the soldiers are firing indiscriminately, peppering the neighborhood with small arms fire. The fourth victim slows his car down to see what is happening and is killed by gunfire. Others are killed, including a crippled man, his wife, and two children, who were cremated when their car was riddled by gunfire and exploded. At the scene of the killings, pandemonium reigned, according to one journalist who witnessed the killings: "While US troops were loading the bullet-shattered cars on trucks -- and trying to stop cameramen filming the carnage -- crowds screamed abuse at them. One American soldier a few feet from me climbed into the seat of his Humvee, threw his helmet on the floor of the vehicle and shouted: 'Sh*t! Sh*t!'"
An Iraqi witness reports, "The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they had shot, not once. They let the car burn [containing the family] and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals." Sheikh Habib, who was not in Baghdad when the raid occured, later claims that his house was looted and partially destroyed by the Americans who went through it looking for one of Hussein's sons or possibly Hussein himself. "I have no idea why they came here," he says. "But if they want to find anybody in this house they just have to knock on the door."
Other Iraqis are furious at what they consider wanton murder. "We consider the Americans now as war criminals," said Mahmoud al-Baghdadi, a 32-year-old baker. "They claim to be fighting terrorism, but they cannot defend freedom by killing disabled people." Yaqdan Kadhem, a waiter, says that he had felt sympathy for the Americans, but now he supported the attacks on US troops. "Until now I was against Saddam Hussein, but now I hate the Americans for what they did yesterday." A doctor at the Yarmouk hospital, which received four of the dead, [shouted] "If an American came to my emergency room, maybe I would kill him." (Guardian, Independent/Infoshop News)
July 27: Senator Bob Graham, former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, says, "High officials in this [Saudi] government, who I assume were not just rogue officials acting on their own, made substantial contributions to the support and well-being of two of these terrorists and facilitated their ability to plan, practice and then execute the tragedy of Sept. 11." (LA Times)
July 27: A media observer points out that on the same day the 9/11 report was released (July 24), so were photos of the slain Hussein sons, the government held a "very videogenic" al-Qaeda attack drill, and Vice-President Dick Cheney made a rare public appearance to praise Bush's attempts to curb terrorism. The obvious conclusion is that the administration did its very best to draw media and public attention away from the report. (Toronto Star)
July 27: The judge overseeing the investigation into the death of scientist David Kelly is demanding that Tony Blair turn over "sensitive e-mails, paperwork and phone records which could draw the Prime Minister directly into the affair," according to news reports. Sources within the Blair administration suggest that the administration deliberately "outed" Kelly as the source of a media leak that revealed a vital dossier of Iraqi intelligence had been "sexed up" for public consumption. Aside from e-mails and records that could disclose the extent of the administration's involvement, Kelly's wife Jan may have kept diary entries that shed light upon the last days of Kelly's life. (Scotsman)
July 27: Bush tells the press that doubts about the validity of the Niger uranium story only emerged "subsequent to the [State of the Union] speech," a bald-faced and easily disproven lie. Few bother. (Paul Waldman)
July 27: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, one of the strongest neo-conservative voices in the American media, observes in a recent address that when George W. Bush took office, no one would have foreseen that the US would have been at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq: "Two regime changes in 18 months, that's not bad. I kind of like that pattern." (Washington Post)

July 28: A number of US senators call on the Bush administration to fully declassify Congress's 9/11 report. Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the administration of using classification to "disguise and keep from the American people ineptitude and incompetence, which was a contributing factor toward Sept. 11." (AP/Chicago Sun-Times)
July 28: Intelligence assessments have downgraded Osama bin Laden's importance as a target for US attack. Middle East expert Jessica Stern says that while al-Qaeda is "still the most significant threat to U.S. national security today," the organization has been so decentralized by the relentless hunt for its leaders, capturing bin Laden "almost doesn't matter." French Islamic expert Gilles Kepel suggests that, without media exposure, bin Laden is "fading." He adds, "Terrorism requires the media, but he's become invisible. It becomes less and less important to kill him, except as a trophy." (New Yorker)
July 28: Clare Short, the former cabinet minister who resigned after the Iraq war, accuses Prime Minister Tony Blair of being "implicated" in the death of government scientist David Kelly. The former International Development Secretary says Dr Kelly's apparent suicide was a result of "an abuse of power" by the government, with Tony Blair and his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, working "very, very closely together." A spokesperson for Blair dismisses Short's comments. Of Kelly's death, Short says: "The truth needs to be found and those responsible held to account. Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair work very, very closely together. They are all implicated, it seems to me." (Guardian)
July 28: Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating says that the US has begun another international nuclear arms race with its actions after 9/11, and says both Bill Clinton and Al Gore would have handled the US response to 9/11 "very differently." Keating says that by the US walking away from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they have signaled to other countries that they too could be part of a resumed nuclear arms race. "Not just in India or Pakistan, or Iran and North Korea and even Israel, but in lesser states which believe they need their pocket nuke to make the world deal with them respectfully." The earlier US doctrine of containment has been abandoned in favor of an aggressive, pre-emptive first strike doctrine that foregoes internationalism for what Keating calls a winner-take-all, me-first strategy. "I hope the Americans have not led us into a Mad Max world -- while they seek to shield themselves in the cocoon of national missile defense. ...This period of strident American unilateralism and militarism cuts across this notion [of multinational cooperation] while putting no adequate or alternative framework in place." (Australian AP/CommonDreams)
July 28: The US admits that its occupying forces in Iraq are conducting more aggressive operations against Baathist and Sunni guerrillas in the areas north of Baghdad. Over 300 Iraqi fighters and civilians have been killed in the stepped-up operations, and thousands have been detained. While the offensive has resulted in more American casualties, the military insists that the tactics are working, and the area is becoming more secure. Some commanders believe that the resistance in this area is almost wiped out, but others fear that the remaining guerrillas will resort to attacking American civilians and friendly Iraqis as their forces continue to dwindle. Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, says that tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. Recently, his troops captured and detained the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note that read, "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." (Washington Post)
July 28: Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan writes that the debacle in Iraq proves that George H.W. Bush was right in 1991 not to invade Baghdad and topple the Hussein regime. He compares the current debacle in Iraq, with "proconsul Paul Bremer...demanding thousands more to put down a guerrilla revolt that has broken out against our occupation," to "the colonial wars of the European empires, all of which were lost because the natives were more willing to pay in blood to drive the imperialists out than the imperialists were willing to pay in blood to stay around." (American Conservative)

July 29: President Bush continues to refuse to allow 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report to be released to the public, saying that material in it could compromise national security if released. The material apparently documents links between Saudi Arabian governmental and business officials and terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. A storm of criticism greets Bush's decision, with many senior intelligence officials and lawmakers accusing him of keeping the material secret in order to protect Saudi Arabia. Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican and former vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disagrees with the decision, saying that "90, 95 percent of it would not compromise, in my judgment, anything in national security." Saudi government spokespeople demand that the pages be released, saying that they are being "indicted by insinuation" and insisting that they have nothing to hide. While some senior intelligence officials agree that the pages should remain secret, Representative Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, disagrees: "Classification should protect sources and methods, ongoing investigations and our national security interests. It is not intended to protect reputations of people or countries. ...This administration has an obsession with secrecy, and this report is over-classified." Senator Charles Schumer says, "The administration's stubborn refusal to declassify documents is business as usual, coddling and covering up for the Saudis." (ABC News, AP/ABC News)
July 29: A Buzzflash commentator points out that the Congressional inquiry on 9/11 was denied access to a number of critical informational sources, including access to Bush's Daily Briefings, access to administration officials, the presence of "minders" during interviews, counter-terrorism budgetary data, CIA and NSA documents and other very important information. "This denial of access possibly prevented the Joint Inquiry from properly doing its job and possibly put the United States at a greater risk of attack." (Buzzflash)

"Policy Analysis Market"

July 29: The Pentagon decides to terminate a plan created jointly by the Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and two private agencies, Net Exchange, a market technologies company, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, part of the Economist magazine, that would have established a "Policy Analysis Market," which would have allowed people to anonymously bet on the "futures" of terrorism and terrorism-related instances, such as when the next terrorist attack on American soil would occur, how many would die in that attack, when the king of Jordan would be deposed, and so forth. The program was ultimately approved by Terrorism Information Agency head and Iran-contra figure John Poindexter. $750,000 has already been spent on the program, and Poindexter planned to ask Congress for $8 million in additional funding. Congressional Democrats, led by the two senators who discovered the program, Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan, are vociferous in their response when they learn of the proposed market, and some Republicans add their voices to the criticisms. Dorgan calls it a "sick idea." He continues, "I think this is unbelievably stupid. It combines the worst of all our instincts. It is a tragic waste of taxpayers' money, it will be offensive to almost everyone. Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in...and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?" Wyden says, "The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and grotesque."
Dorgan and Wyden release a letter they sent to Poindexter on July 28 calling for an immediate end to the program. They note a May 20 report to lawmakers that cited the possibility of using market forces to predict whether terrorists would attack Israel with biological weapons, and wrote, "surely such a threat should be met with intelligence gathering of the highest quality and not by putting the question to individuals betting on an Internet Web site."
July 28 also saw the Pentagon attempt to defend the plan, saying that the proposed futures market could reveal "dispersed and even hidden information" and claiming that "[f]utures markets have proven themselves good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions. ...PAM refines this approach by trading futures contracts that deal with underlying fundamentals of relevance to the Middle East initially." (The Web site, which has been removed, originally depicted information about a North Korean missile strike as well as information on the Middle East.) Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claims, "I share your shock at this kind of program," but defends the people who created the plan: "The agency is brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative. It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative." Democratic Minority Leader Senator Tom Daschle called the program "an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism" (it is quite conceivable that a trader could buy futures in the assassination of a particular Middle Eastern leader, for example, and then arrange for that assassination in order to profit from the murder) and "a plan to trade in death." Senator Hillary Clinton called the program "a futures market in death," and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said the program "defies common sense. It's absurd." An editorial in the Portsmouth Herald questions the mental stability of the program's planners along with the ones who approved it.
In testifying before the Senate, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz disowned the program. Before the plan was scrapped, a Web site had already been set up and potential traders were being screened for participation, and was ready to begin operations on October 1 with 1000 traders initially involved; that number would have risen to 10,000 by January 2004. The Web site said of potential participants, "Whatever a prospective trader's interest in PAM, involvement in this group prediction process should prove engaging and may prove profitable." In response, the Senate, which has already mandated strict oversight on Poindexter's TIA program to prohibit it from being used against Americans, has added an amendment to a defense spending bill that would terminate funding for the TIA. The PAM will no longer be funded by the Pentagon, essentially ending its function, but will not be officially terminated until next year's budget is passed. (AP/ABC News, AP/ABC News, BBC, Guardian, International Herald Tribune, Portsmouth Herald)
July 29: After Bush's refusal to allow 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report to be divulged, Saudi officials agree to allow US officials to question Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who befriended two of the 9/11 hijackers. al-Bayoumi will be questioned by FBI and CIA agents in Saudi Arabia, with Saudi agents present during the questioning. Senator Charles Schumer says, "the devil is in the details," and says it is necessary that al-Bayoumi, who is suspected of being an agent of the Saudi government, be questioned in the US without any Saudi officials involved. (ABC News)
July 29: Representative Henry Waxman sends a letter to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asking her to respond to his previous letter of July 10, which outlined his concerns about the fraudulent administration claims about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from Niger. He also asks about the conflicts between statements from Rice and from her deputy, Stephen Hadley, regarding those claims, and about the conflicts between the administration's presentation of claims in the National Intelligence Estimate and what the NIE really stated. Additionally, he asks her to explain why she deliberately misrepresented the State Department's intelligence findings in numerous statements to the press. To date, Rice has not responded to either of Waxman's letters. (Henry Waxman)
July 29: Federal officials warn of possible al-Qaeda attacks in the near future, but don't raise the terrorist threat level from its current "elevated" (yellow) status. Originally the warning was sent to law enforcement agencies and airlines; after media inquiries, the warning was placed on the Department of Homeland Security's Web site. No specific dates or targets are given. Jim Schwartz, director of emergency management for Arlington County, Va., which includes both Reagan Washington National Airport and the Pentagon, says his agency has received no warning from Homeland Security; Jon Safley, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association, a pilots union, also says he hasn't been getting warnings and isn't sure that every pilot does. (AP/Yahoo)
July 29: In a Los Angeles Times editorial, Robert Scheer writes that "Leaks from the censored portions of the [Congressional report on 9/11] indicate that at least some of [the 15 Saudi hijackers of 9/11] were in close contact with -— and financed by -— members of the Saudi elite, extending into the ranks of the royal family. The report finds no such connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists. It is now quite clear that the president -— unwilling to deal with the ties between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden -— pursued Hussein as a politically convenient scapegoat. By drawing attention away from the Muslim fanatic networks centered in Saudi Arabia, Bush diverted the war against terror. That seems to be the implication of the 28 pages, which the White House demanded be kept from the American people when the full report was released." He continues, "The fact is, Riyadh, unlike Baghdad, has long been a key hotbed of extremist Muslim organizing. By shielding and nurturing our relationship with the Saudi sheiks, Bush & Son have provided cover for those who support terror. After all, is it really likely that career-conscious FBI and CIA officers would be willing to criticize possible Al Qaeda-House of Saud links when the president's father is out hustling business ties with the same family?" (LA Times)
July 29: John Dean, former White House counsel under Richard Nixon, observes that the Congressional report on 9/11 reveals that either the Bush administration absolutely knew about the potential of terrorists flying airplanes into skyscrapers, despite their claims of ignorance, or the CIA failed to give the White House this essential information, which it possessed and provided to others. Since the administration refuses to release the documents that answers that question, the likelihood is that the administration did indeed know, and is currently covering up their failure to respond. Dean cites Bush's invoking of "executive privilege" to keep his August 6, 2001 Daily Briefing out of the hands of the investigators as evidence of his belief. (FindLaw)
July 29: American Nobel Prize laureate for Economics George Akerlof characterizes the Bush government as the "worst ever" in American history: "I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extradordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy. ...This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for [American] people to engage in civil disobedience. I think it's time to protest -- as much as possible." (Der Spiegel/CommonDreams)
July 29: The Bush administration announces plans to drastically cut back the presence of armed air marshals on cross-country and international air flights, apparently because of the cost of overnight lodging for the marshals. After the story hits the media, the administration reversed itself and declared that air marshals would continue to fly on all such flights. The Department of Homeland Security blames the announcement and its retraction on a mixup in communication, and says that it has been working with air marshal officials to correct the situation. Observers fail to understand the reasoning behind removing air marshals from the very flights considered at the highest risk of terrorist hijackings, especially in light of recent terror warnings concerning hijacked airliners. (MSNBC)

July 30: Bush finally takes personal responsibility for the erroneous claims of his State of the Union address regarding Iraq's attempt to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, at least in a general sense: "I take personal responsibility for everything I say, absolutely," he states. (Note that previously he had allowed George Tenet, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice, and the NSC's Robert Joseph to take responsibility for the claims.) He also insists that the threat from Iraq was real and that he strongly believes Iraq had a weapons programs (not weapons). He reiterates that the war on terrorism is a long way from being over, and warns that al-Qaeda still poses an imminent threat to the US and its allies. Bush also claims that his three successive tax cuts have enhanced the nation's economic security, and the war in Iraq was contributing to stability in the Middle East. He calls for patience as Iraq tries to form a new, free society: "I didn't expect Thomas Jefferson to emerge in Iraq in a 90-day period." (ABC News, AP/FindLaw, David Corn)
July 30: Saudi officials concede that al-Qaeda terrorists are possibly training in camps inside Saudi Arabia. Since May 12's suicide bombings in Riyadh, over 200 terror suspects have been arrested and over a dozen killed in police raids throughout the kingdom. A Saudi newspaper editor admits that terror groups find it easy to recruit in Saudi Arabia: "Al-Qaeda has infiltrated Saudi Arabia more than we imagined because extremist ideas, like those of bin Laden, have roots here. ...When bin Laden calls for jihad or recruits, his ideas find many takers here, because these same extremist ideas have a base here and are widespread in the kingdom. ...We need to admit this. These are not unique cases." (AP/Chicago Tribune)
July 30: The CIA sends a letter to the Department of Justice noting that, with White House officials outing covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson via columnist Robert Novak, a possible violation of criminal law has occurred and requesting an investigation. The CIA adds that its own Office of Security is examining the leak. In itself, the letter is not unusual; it submits one of these a week, on average, and, according to one CIA official, about "99% of them go nowhere." But this one will not go away. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
July 30: On PBS's NewsHour, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice tells a bold lie directly to Jim Lehrer's face: "It was a case that said [Saddam Hussein] is trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year." In point of fact, it was Bush who told the UN on September 12, 2002, "should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year." Two days later, he said, in his weekly radio address, "This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb and, with fissile material, could build one within a year." Earlier in the month, Rice attempted another misdirection by asserting that anyone who accused the administration of overhyping the threat posed by Iraq were guilty of engaging in "revisionist history," a charge she is certainly guilty of herself. The charge of "revisionist history" is obviously scripted, and will be pumped by senior administration officials, including Bush himself. (PBS NewsHour/Paul Waldman)
July 30: An urgent memo sent out to US airlines and airport security managers warns of teams of terrorists possibly plotting to hijack airliners using cameras and other innocuous objects modified to carry explosive devices or other weapons. (Washington Post)
July 30: Bush sends Reconstructionist Christian Tom DeLay, who is anything but an expert on foreign policy, to horrify members of Israel's Knesset with a ringing declaration of the war on terror as a tenet of fanatical Christian faith: "The war on terror is not a misunderstanding," DeLay lectures the members. "It is not an opportunity for negotiation or dialogue. It's a battle between good and evil, between the Truth of liberty and the Lie of terror. Freedom and terrorism will struggle -- good and evil -- until the battle is resolved. These are the terms Providence has put before the United States, Israel, and the rest of the civilized world. They are stark, and they are final." One can only imagine how the Talmudic scholars in earshot of DeLay dissected his statement. They are also no doubt aware of DeLay's fiercely held belief that all Jews must be converted to Christianity if they intend on enjoying the fruits of the hereafter, and agrees with evangelist Gary North in saying, "The Messiah has come. Do not pray for His return if you deny He has come. When He returns again, it will be to enforce the eternal sanctions of his Covenant. There will be no escape then." (Mark Crispin Miller)

Resistance in Iraq escalating

July 31: A British parliamentary committee finds that the Iraqi invasion and subsequent occupation did little, if anything, to reduce the threat from al-Qaeda to the Western world, and in fact may have assisted the terrorist group to recruit new members. The report states, "We cannot conclude that these threats have diminished significantly, in spite of 'regime change' in Iraq and progress in capturing some of the leaders of al-Qaida." It adds that a second UN resolution authorizing the war would have been "highly desirable," and found that weapons inspectors did not provide the U.N. Security Council with "compelling evidence" of Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction. (AP/FindLaw)
July 31: The Bush administration has quietly scrapped a nuclear watchdog agency that provided independent oversight of the development of the US nuclear arsenal. The decision to close down the National Nuclear Security Administration advisory committee, which is required by law to hold public hearings and issue public reports on nuclear weapons issues, comes just days before a secret meeting at a US air force base in Nebraska to discuss the development of a new generation of tactical "mini nukes" and "bunker buster" bombs, as well as an eventual resumption of nuclear testing. Democrat Ed Markey, co-chairman of a Congressional taskforce on non-proliferation, says: "Instead of seeking balanced expert advice and analysis about this important topic, the Department of Energy has disbanded the one forum for honest, unbiased external review of its nuclear weapons policies." An NNSA spokesman says that the committee had outlived its usefulness. Former members of the advisory committee said they had the impression that the new administrator, Linton Brooks, was not interested in its work, and decided not to renew its charter. Sidney Drell, a leading physicist and former committee member, says, "I presume they did not value us or found us a nuisance. An independent, tough advisory board is very important in having a strong [nuclear] stockpile program." The committee's charter said that its meetings "will be held approximately four times each year;" it was not summoned at all in the last year of its existence. Drell says, "They just didn't call us. We didn't hear from them." A few months before the program was disbanded, it produced a report that strongly criticized the Bush administration's push for new nuclear weapons. The report states, "Rather than moving to develop new nuclear weapons, the United States should push to strengthen the nonproliferation regime through example and through stronger compliance measures directed at those who flout its basic purposes." Daryl Kimball, head of the independent Arms Control Association, says, "This will make the department of energy and the NNSA even more opaque. It will be all the more difficult to understand what they are planning to do." Markey asks, "The Bush administration is considering policy changes that will alter the role of nuclear weapons in national defence. ...Given the importance and sheer complexity of the issues raised...why was the only independent contemplative body studying nuclear weapons disbanded -- and disbanded in such a surreptitious fashion?" (Guardian)
July 31: Admiral John Poindexter will resign from the Pentagon in the next few weeks as a result of the uproar over the political futures market set in motion by his agency. The "Policy Analysis Market," which purported to be able to predict future events by allowing market participants to bet on terror-related events, was ready to launch when two Democratic senators discovered it and went public. "It's fair to say that the secretary [Rumsfeld] understood what Admiral Poindexter understands, which is that it's difficult for any work that he might be associated with to receive a dispassionate hearing." Senator Patrick Leahy responds to Poindexter's resignation by saying, "The problem is more than the fact that Admiral Poindexter was put in charge of these projects. The problem is that these projects were just fine with the Administration until the public found out about them. When Members of Congress pointed out these excesses -- from plans to electronically monitor all Americans, to a futures market for betting on when the next Americans or others would be killed in terrorist attacks – these ventures could not stand the scrutiny. The lesson seems to be that you can do whatever you want quietly, so long as it doesn't become a public embarrassment. That is why the Administration still has a problem as far as the privacy rights of Americans are concerned, and simply removing Adm. Poindexter doesn't fix that." (AP/NewsDay, New York Times, Patrick Leahy)
July 31: US troops in Iraq have suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, according to Army officers. Months after American combat troops settled into occupation duty, they were camped out in primitive shelters without windows or air conditioning. The Army has invested heavily in modular barracks, showers, bathroom facilities and field kitchens, but troops in Iraq were using ramshackle plywood latrines and living without fresh food or regular access to showers and telephones. Even mail delivery -- also managed by civilian contractors -- fell weeks behind. Conditions have improved somewhat, but the problems have intensified concerns about the Pentagon's growing reliance on private defense contractors to handle everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance. "We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions," Lt. Gen. Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, says. It's become clear that private industry cannot, or will not, carry out their duties in a war zone. "You cannot order civilians into a war zone," says an Army official. "People can sign up to that -- but they can also back out." As a result, soldiers lived first in the mud, now in the heat and dust. Back home, a group of mothers organized a drive to buy and ship air conditioners to their sons. One Army captain asked a reporter to send a box of nails and screws to repair his living quarters and latrines. The US military has been moving for over a decade towards keeping its personnel in combat jobs and hiring contractors to do the rest, but the speed of this move has accelerated under pressure from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The news report points out, "Replacing 1,100 Marine cooks with civilians, as the Corps did two years ago, might make short-term economic sense. But cooks might be needed as riflemen -- as they were during the desperate Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. And untrained civilians 'can walk off the job any time they want, and the only thing the military can do is sue them later on,'" an Army official notes. Due to overlapping contracts and multiple contracting offices, nobody in the Pentagon seems to know precisely how many contractors are responsible for which jobs, or the overall cost. That is one reason why the Bush administration can only estimate that it is spending about $4 billion a month on troops in Iraq. White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten said this week he could not even estimate the cost of keeping troops in Iraq in fiscal 2004, which begins Oct. 1. Last fall the Army hired Kellogg Brown & Root, a Houston-based contractor, to draw up a plan for supporting U.S. troops in Iraq, covering everything from handling the dead to managing airports. KBR eventually received contracts to perform some of the jobs, and it and other contractors began assembling in Kuwait for the war. Skyrocketing insurance rates for civilians in harm's way slowed productivity; but more to the point, dozens of companies with little oversight or coordination were delegated to handle troop support, with the predictable result that little actually got done. The military is also in dire need of a plethora of replacement parts for their vehicles and machines, including replacement tracks for Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Abrams tanks, and Paladin howitzers; tires for Humvee utility vehicles; generators for electrical power; and other parts and supplies. (Newhouse News, AP/Kansas City Star)
July 31: President Bush will spend the entire month of August at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, a slightly longer vacation than in 2001 and 2002. His staff characterizes it as a "working vacation." Most of his time will be spent raising campaign money and attending fund-raising functions. Congress plans 32 days of summer vacation, with the Senate slated to adjourn August 1 and go back into session Sept. 2, the day after Labor Day. (NY Post, MahaBlog)
July 31: The Bush administration is secretly negotiating with Iran to swap Iranian dissidents for three senior al-Qaeda members currently being held in Iran. The three operatives include Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, an alleged poison expert who got medical treatment in Iraq; Sa'ad Bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's third-oldest son who is believed to be planning new al-Qaida operations; and Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the al-Qaida spokesman who introduced Osama bin Laden in a widely seen videotape after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The Iranian dissidents are classified as terrorists by the Bush administration, but are seen by some conservative American lawmakers as freedom fighters who oppose the Iranian regime. They belong to the Mujahadeen al-Khalq (MEK), a group that has received some unofficial support from the US. (MSNBC)
July 31: Recently retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who helped develop US plans for occupying Iraq, blames "the key decision-makers in the Pentagon" for "the odd set of circumstances that placed us as a long-term occupying force in the world's nastiest rat's nest, without an exit plan." She worries that they will "[n]ever be required to answer their accusers, thanks to this administration's military as well as publicity machine, and the disgraceful political compromises already made by most of the Congress." (Akron Beacon-Journal/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
July 31: Former representative Cynthia McKinney, who was excoriated by Republicans and Democrats alike for questioning the Bush administration on its knowledge of the events preceding the 9/11 attacks, speaks to a Harlem audience. She says in part, "[W]ho among this Administration will take responsibility for the tragic events of September 11th and the tremendous 'intelligence failures' that cost the lives of thousands of people who live and work in New York City? Interestingly, I was the one who called for an investigation of September 11th asking the fully appropriate question, What did the Bush Administration know and when did it know it, about the tragic events of September 11th? Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney asked Tom Daschle not to investigate what went wrong on September 11th. An Australian newspaper ran the headline, 'Bosses so lax, agents felt they were spies.' They were describing our FBI. ...To this day that I know of no one in any decision-making position in the whole of this Administration has accepted responsibility for failing the American people. Instead, from this Administration we have obstruction, obfuscation, dissembling, and deception. ...George Bush and Dick Cheney...have the nerve to launch two simultaneous wars, at least one that is against international law; award no bid contracts to their friends in the defense industry; erode our Constitution and our Bill of Rights; put Paul Wolfowitz in charge of military tribunals (that same travesty of justice that we have excoriated other countries for in the past); put a felon, convicted of lying to Congress, in charge of our privacy; and lie about the rescue of Jessica Lynch, as well as the landing of America's top gun -- George W. -- on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which supposedly was out at sea, but that was really in San Diego harbor. And this all comes after they stole the Presidency on the uncounted chads of black and Latino voters in a scheme that was orchestrated at the top. Republicans rewarded Katherine Harris with a Congressional seat. ...In 1776, it was King George III who drove the titans of the American colony to write our Declaration of Independence. They wrote that there are certain unalienable rights and that it is the responsibility of government to protect, preserve, and promote these rights. However, in the words of its signers, 'when a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinces a design to reduce [a people to life] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.' And with that, a rebellion became a revolution. My mother didn't want me to give this speech tonight. I'm sure it's hard for her to read the terrible things the corporate press and right-wing activists write about me. In today's America, she's right. I will probably get in trouble for what I've said to you tonight. But it won't be the first time I get in trouble for telling the truth. And I'll continue to tell the truth. As I have said before, I won't sit down and I won't shut up. I agree with [rapper] Dead Prez: We need a revolution!" (From the Wilderness)

Late July: Iraq administrator Paul Bremer flies to Washington to meet with CIA director George Tenet. In the meeting, Bremer asks Tenet about an issue he had cabled about. Tenet says he has never seen the cable. Bremer realizes that Donald Rumsfeld has been sandbagging him, just like Rumsfeld did his predecessor Jay Garner. Instead of sharing Bremer's information with Rumsfeld's fellow NSC principals, he has been keeping all the information for himself, and sharing only what he wants others to know. "Rumsfeld's impossible to deal with," Bremer tells a colleague. Rumsfeld is throwing his weight around and the rest of the NSC doesn't have the spine to stand up to him. The entire interagency process is broken down. Why isn't Rice helping disseminate information? he wonders. (Bob Woodward)

Back to July 2003

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 Four

Pentagon moves to slash military pay and benefits

9/11 report censored by administration before its release

US plans to move against North Korea leaked

Kay's ISG finds no WMDs; Curveball proven a fraud

"Policy Analysis Market"

Resistance in Iraq escalating

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