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
June 2003
Week Four
US military leader admits forces entered Iraq before official invasion date
- June 22: General Tommy Franks confirms that American, British, and Australian special forces entered Iraq days before the war was officially declared on March 20. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on March 18 that no decision had been made to whether Australian forces would fight in Iraq; as he said this, Australian forces were already on the ground and actively attacking Iraqi observation posts. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Radiation poisoning of Iraqis
- June 22: Dozens of Iraqis living near the Tuwaitha nuclear plant are coming to nearby hospitals with symptoms of radiation poisoning. The Tuwaitha nuclear facility, 12 miles south of Baghdad, was left unguarded after Iraqi troops fled the area on the eve of the war. It is thought to have contained hundreds of tons of natural uranium and nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons. US troops didn't secure the area until April 7 (note that the oil fields had been secured by March 21). By then, looters from surrounding villages had stripped it of much of its contents, including uranium storage barrels they later used to hold drinking water. Radiation levels of up to 3,000 times normal have been found on the grounds of a nearby primary school. People suffering from symptoms of radiation sickness started showing up at the hospital closest to the nuclear site as early as April 16. Much, but not all, of the uranium has been found at or near the site by a team sent from the IAEA. The team, whose scope was restricted by the interim administration, is not allowed to give medical exams to Iraqis reported to have been sickened by contact with the materials. (AP/Miami Herald, Peter Singer)
- June 22: The British Sunday Herald reveals the Bush administration's plan to "dominate" space as part of its plan to keep military control of the globe. The Air Force Space Command Strategic Master Plan details the development of exotic weapons, including nuclear weapons, spacecraft, and soldiers trained to attack from space, that can attack any area of the globe within seconds of the order being given. Domestic laws and foreign agreements are subject to be rewritten or ignored: as the document states, "To fully develop and exploit [space]...some US policies and international treaties may need to be reviewed and modified." Co-author General Lance W. Lord, of Air Force Space Command, writes in the foreword: "As guardians of the High Frontier, Air Force Space Command has the vision and the people to ensure the United States achieves space superiority today and in the future." The document also stipulates that no other nation can be allowed to develop similar capabilities. As the article states, "[i]n order to 'fully exploit and control space', the United States Air Force Space Command says it has to 'negate' the ability of foreign powers to develop their own space capabilities." (Sunday Herald)
- June 23: More and more stories continue to leak out about alleged abuses of Iraqi civilians by US military forces. Numerous stories of detainees being tortured with electric shocks, two of alleged rapes, and at least one alleged murder of a detainee are circulating through Iraq, though all of the instances have been declared false by US military investigators. (The story that American soldiers gang-raped two teenage Iraqi girls has been independently proven to be false.) Stories that US soldiers forced captured Iraqi looters to strip naked, painted racist slogans on their bodies and made them run through the streets, have been confirmed as being accurate. Iraqi children with severe burns have been refused for treatment by Army doctors. The Army claims that the children's condition did not fall into a category that requires Army physicians to treat them, and that there was no inappropriate response on the part of the doctors. Sgt. David J. Borell, who tried to get treatment for the children, says, "I have never seen in almost 14 years of Army experience anything that callous." (AP/Findlaw, Christian Science Monitor, Daily Mirror/The Memory Hole)
- June 23: Bush is visibly upset during an NSC meeting about the protest of 2,000 Shi'ites the day before outside CPA headquarters. Given his blessing by their patriarch, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the protesters had demanded elections and a representative government made up of Iraqis. "How did we get on the wrong side of the question of whether or not the Iraqis ought to have elections?" Bush demands. Condoleezza Rice agrees, and thinks that it might be better to have elections first, and write a constitution and organize Iraqi society later. But it isn't her call -- the responsibility for Iraq's governance ultimately lies with Don Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer. Five days later, Sistani issues a fatwa, a religious directive, rejecting any US-picked constitutional council, and says Iraqis should choose the draftees of their own constitution. (Bob Woodward)
- June 23: Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri of Peoria, Illinois, is declared an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. He was arrested shortly after September 11, 2001, when Al-Marri lied to the FBI about his travels through the US, about phone calls he made, and his use of credit cards. After he refused to cooperate with the 9/11 investigation, the Justice Department dismissed the charges against him, had him declared an enemy combatant by the President on June 23, and incarcerated in a Naval brig in South Carolina. Al-Marri could stay in solitary confinement for the rest of his life without being convicted of a crime, without access to lawyers, family, or friends, under a body of laws never passed by Congress or approved by judicial review. Bush also wants to try "detainees" such as Al-Marri in secret military tribunals in foreign countries such as Cuba, where he insists the Constitution does not apply and therefore defendants will not receive Constitutional guarantees. Al-Marri's case mirrors those of Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla; Hamdi was denied access to a lawyer by an appeals court, and Padilla was granted access to a lawyer, but has not yet seen one while the government appeals the decision. While the US Supreme Court has ruled time and again that all persons confined by the government are presumed innocent until proven guilty, must be told the reasons for their confinement and are entitled to challenge those reasons promptly in a court. And the Supreme Court has also held countless times that it has power to review and to void all acts of the Congress and the president. The law under Bush ignores those rulings. (LA Times/The Clipboard)
- June 23: Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, meets with disgraced New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Miller is there to ask about "slanted" intelligence and the "bungled" search for WMDs in Iraq. Libby knows Miller is a reliable outlet for White House spin, and uses the opportunity to attempt to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's name to Miller. He gripes about what he calls "selective leaking" from the CIA about WMDs, noting that the CIA has what he calls a "hedging strategy" to protect itself if no WMDs could be found. He is livid about media reports suggesting that Bush officials, including his boss, had lied or exaggerated intelligence about the WMDs. He tells Miller that the CIA had sent Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the uranium claims, and claims that it was aides to Cheney, and not Cheney himself, whose questions had sparked Wilson's trip. (Libby is lying; Cheney's own questioning had provoked the CIA into asking Wilson to make the journey. In fact, he denies any involvement whatsoever by Cheney. Miller writes in her notebook, "Veep didn't know of Joe Wilson.") He then mentions Wilson's wife and identifies her as a CIA agent, prompting Miller to write, "Wife works in bureau?" though he apparently does not mention Valerie Plame Wilson by name. Miller believes that Libby has identified Plame as working in a bureau inside the CIA that handles WMD issues; Plame is a senior official on the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Libby's entire thrust is to blame the CIA for the Iraq-Niger claim. Miller notes, "No briefer came in and said, 'You got it wrong, Mr. President." Miller does not write a story from her interview with Libby.
- On the same day, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who has already authored two quite favorable biographies of Bush's presidency, speaks with Libby about the Iraq-Niger allegations. He alerts Libby to the 18-page list of questions he intends to ask Cheney (an unusual practice by any stretch, for a reporter to alert his subject as to what questions he intends to ask, but a quite usual practice for Woodward), and, in later testimony to the Libby investigation grand jury, says he had a note about Plame in the questions. Woodward says he and Libby did not discuss Plame during their conversation. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
- June 24: A State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons says he was "pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views." Christian Westermann testifies in front of Congress that he was pressured, but never changed the wording of his intelligence reports, and that he felt pressure to change his reporting on both Iraq and Cuba. (New York Times)
"I don't know anybody I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons." -- Donald Rumsfeld
- June 24: Bush's intention to use the "war on terrorism" as a driving force behind his re-election campaign is exemplified by his speech at a $4 million fundraiser a few blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City. "[T]errorists declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got," he told his audience. Although aides have declared that Bush himself will not use the 9/11 attacks as "campaign fodder," his supporters don't hesitate: at the same fundraiser, New York Governor George Pataki says, "Thank God we have a president who, when our [country] was attacked in a way we never experienced before, understood it's not a time for national hand-wringing, it's a time for national leadership. On Sept. 11 and thereafter we could have never had a stronger leader for our country or a better friend for our city and state than George W. Bush." (AP/Yahoo! News)
- June 24: New York Times reporter Judith Miller is facing questions about her role during a US Army mission to find Iraqi weapons. Miller, who was embedded with the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, played an active role in the search, to the point where one official termed it a "rogue operation." In April, Miller acted as a middleman between the unit and Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress. She directed unit officers to accompany her to Chalabi's headquarters, where she took part in the interrogation of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Jamal Sultan Tikriti. Later that month, Miller objected to orders that "her" unit withdraw, and said that if the withdrawal took place, she would write about it unfavorably in the Times. After discussing the matter with a two-star general, the Army rescinded the withdrawal orders. Some Army officials as well as fellow journalists defend Miller's actions as "aggressive journalism," but others disagree. "This was totally out of [the unit's] lane, getting involved with human intelligence," says one military officer, who said of Miller, "this woman came in with a plan. She was leading them. ...She ended up almost hijacking the mission." A senior staff officer said, "It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better." Several officers note that Miller was in the habit of threatening Army officials with reports to Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, to whom she claims close relations; she also took part in the promotion ceremony of one Army officer, CWO Richard Gonzalez, and pinned the rank to his uniform herself. Miller has faced criticism for filing a number of stories which "optimized" the possibility of Iraq's possession of WMDs. (Washington Post)
- June 24: Ann Coulter's new book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism is published. As with other books of its kind, it eschews facts and research in favor of name-calling, racial slanders, and personal attacks, in this instance accusing liberals for betraying America and being Communist stooges simply by holding liberal beliefs. She says the New York Times "issues traitorous editorials," accuses liberals of "relentlessly attack[ing] their own country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are." She claims that "free speech...is a one-way ratchet for traitors," and "liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason." Heady stuff. As with her last book, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, a cottage industry springs up to debunk her claims and document her sloppy research and bogus sourcing (example: she spends two chapters defending the USA Patriot act, but admits to talk show host Alex Jones that she has never actually read the legislation). Her defense of Senator Joseph McCarthy as a great American is truly breathtaking. (Ann Coulter, Washington Post, Prison Planet [audio link])
- June 25: The US is claiming to have located new evidence of Iraqi WMDs. An Iraqi former top nuclear scientist has turned over parts of a gas centrifuge and related documents that he buried in his Baghdad garden in 1991 on orders from Saddam Hussein. He claims he worked on an Iraqi nuclear program until 1991, when he buried these items in his garden and awaited orders to restart the program; the orders never came. David Kay, a former UN arms inspector who now heads the CIA-led search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, says the parts were classified gas centrifuge components made by the European Enrichment Company for civilian use. The US has also found more recent documents referring to the hiding of weapons materials and VX gas. Additionally, 300 sacks of castor beans were discovered in a small town southeast of Baghdad. The US claims that the beans can be used to make the nerve gas ricin; castor beans can also be used in making motor oil, medicine for nursing mothers, and in paints and varnishes. (AP/Yahoo! News, Buzzflash commentary)
- June 25: The third Iraqi oil pipeline in four days has been set afire. US officials are claiming that this incident is the result of a line break, though they admit that the first two fires were deliberately set. (Reuters)
- June 26: UN weapons inspector JØrn Siljeholm states that Colin Powell "bluffed" the UN with his claims that Iraq had a viable WMD program: "I think something will be found, but nothing in the scale of a robust program. As such, Powell was bluffing the UN's Security Council." Siljeholm thinks that Iraq had the remnants of biological and chemical programs after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but that Iraq was never a threat to the US. (Nettavisen)
- June 26: The New York Times reports on the State Department's intelligence bureau, the INR, and its June 2 report that disputed the CIA's findings about Iraq's supposed mobile bioweapons labs. On the heels of the report comes deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, where Wolfowitz says, "If there's a problem with intelligence...it doesn't mean that anybody misled anybody. It means that intelligence is an art, not a science." And General Richard Myers tries the same dodge with the press: "Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true, it's just, it's intelligence, you know, it's your best estimate of the situation. It doesn't mean it's a fact." (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- June 26: On the heels of Bush's massive tax cut for the wealthy, the White House proposes a $1.5 billion cut in funding for military housing, a proposal that promises extreme hardship for the families of those serving in Iraq. Democratic representative David Obey's proposal for a trimming of the tax cuts going to those making $1 million or over -- a proposal that would reduce their tax cut from $88,000 to $83,000, and in return would restore funds for military housing -- is voted down by the GOP-controlled House. (In These Times)
- June 26: The FBI observes Lawrence Franklin, a neoconservative policy analyst in the office of undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith, divulging secret information about Iraq to the Israeli lobbying organization AIPAC's Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman while having lunch. Four days later the FBI searches Franklin's office and finds the material Franklin disclosed. Franklin admits his guilt; the FBI searches Franklin's home and finds 83 documents of various levels of classification being held illegally. Franklin is stripped of his security clearance. (FindLaw/Marinj/Daily Kos)
- June 27: A UN committee on terrorism announces that it can find no links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links," says chief investigator Michael Chandler. "That doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist. But from what we've seen the answer is no." The US stands by its assertions that the Hussein regime and al-Qaeda had connections. (BBC News)
- June 27: Democrats in Congress announce that they are beginning their own investigation into the intelligence surrounding the Iraqi invasion. Senator Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, directed staff members to begin examining "the objectivity and credibility of the intelligence and its effect on Defense Department policy decisions, military planning and operations in Iraq" after his request for a bipartisan investigation was rejected by committee head Sen. John Warner, a Republican. Democrats also question whether intelligence reports that Iraq was connected to al-Qaeda were falsified or misinterpreted. (AP/Findlaw, AP/FindLaw)
- June 27: Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward shows up in Lewis Libby's office for an interview related to his upcoming book, Plan of Attack. Woodward has an 18-page list of questions for Libby's boss, Dick Cheney, including a question about Valerie Plame Wilson, to which he has already given Libby and Cheney four days of advance notice (see the June 23 item above). Libby uses the opportunity to "spin" Woodward, complaining about articles in the Post and other news outlets that suggested Bush officials were lying or exaggerating the claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. Libby shares with Woodward a few selected portions of the October 2002 NIE, just declassified by Bush and given to Cheney for the vice president to leak to the press in order to manipulate press coverage of the WMD controversy (see the late June item below). The cherrypicked portion of the NIE shown to Woodward asserts that there were, indeed, "vigorous" efforts by Iraq to buy uranium from Niger. Libby says nothing about the staunch dissent mounted by the State Department's INR and by the CIA, nor does he reveal the CIA's recent report debunking the uranium claim altogether. As for Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, Woodward's notes contain nothing about either of them, though Woodward says he may have briefly discussed either or both of them with Libby. (Woodward has already been appraised of Plame's status as a CIA agent by Libby's old friend, Richard Armitage. See above item.) (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
- June 27: Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio says the failure to find the weapons was a defeat for her government, which strongly supported the war. "There is a pervasive concern when and how we will find them," Palacio said. But she says she is not worried about the weapons search. (AP/Yahoo! News)
- June 27: Christine Todd Whitman resigns her position as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, ostensibly to spend more time with her family. In reality, she faces a number of potential media crises, including the public lambasting of her involvement in editing a major EPA report to remove all references to global warming, her involvement in reversing the verdict of an Alabama court that initially found Monsanto, a chemical manufacturer, guilty of dumping toxins in local neighborhoods, and charges that she used EPA agents to provide personal security and run personal errands. Whitman will write a book, It's My Party, Too!, that distances herself from the radical agenda of the Bush administration; many feel Whitman is preparing herself to run as a moderate Republican in the 2008 presidential campaign. Whitman will be replaced by former Utah governor Michael Leavitt, who is best known for subverting federal law to help the Department of Interior open millions of acres of Utah wilderness to developers.
- Whitman signed off on the State of the Environment report on June 19 that originally contained a summary of a 2001 report commission by the White House that warned about the dire effects of global warming. The passage was replaced by a reference to a propaganda tract financed by the American Petroleum Institute. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Todd_Whitman, Laura Flanders, Air America Playbook)
- June 27: Laurence Pope, a retired State Department expert on Arab affairs and a former CPA advisor, says, "Over the next few months, I expect a vicious cycle in which force-protection measures will alienate the population and create more opposition to the occupation, with rising casualties." (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- June 27: Priest, sociologist, and author Andrew Greeley writes, "The point is that, however sincere they were, [the Bush administration] did deceive. They were just plain wrong. The president was just plain wrong. People who make such terrible mistakes should not be retained in office. In large corporations, officials who make similar errors in judgment are discarded (usually with a fat purse in their pocket). The whole chicken-hawk cabal should be swept out of office. In American politics, this is usually accomplished by congressional investigation. However, given the Bush administration's propensity to stonewall and cover up and the pro-administration bias of much of the media, full-scale investigation is unlikely. Despite token movements in that direction, the mantra 'national security' will be invoked to prevent investigation. Just now the federal government can do almost anything it wants. It must be emphasized that while lies are immoral, bad judgment at the senior level of government--being so utterly wrong--is intolerable and dangerous in a nuclear world." (Chicago SunTimes)
US halts free elections in Iraq
- June 28: Under the direction of US administrator Paul Bremer, US military commanders order halts to local elections and self-rule in cities and towns across Iraq. Instead, they have moved to install their own, handpicked mayors and administrators, many of whom have close ties to the old Iraqi military hierarchy. Angry Iraqis charge that the US occupation forces are betraying their promise to bring democracy and self-governance to Iraq. "They give us a general," says a mayoral candidate in Samarra who was denied a chance to stand for election. "What does that tell you, eh? First of all, an Iraqi general? They lost the last three wars! They're not even good generals. And they know nothing about running a city. ...The new mayors do not have to be perfect. But I think that by allowing us to establish our own governments, many of the problems today would be solved. If you ask most Iraqis today if they have a government, they will tell you, no, what we have is an occupation, and that is a dangerous thing for the people to think." Bremer counters that there is "no blanket prohibition" against self-rule. "I'm not opposed to it, but I want to do it a way that takes care of our concerns. ...Elections that are held too early can be destructive. It's got to be done very carefully." Bremer and other US officials worry that some elections may be carried by Shi'ite and Baathist candidates who may not be willing to cooperate with the American occupation forces. For now, most cities and towns outside of Baghdad are run by former Iraqi military and police officials who had close ties to the former regime. Says one US Army sergeant with the Civil Affairs Battalion, "There will be no elections for the foreseeable future." Rumsfeld says that Iraqi democracy "can't be rushed," and muses during a briefing of House members, "If you think about it, Adolf Hitler was elected. So elections are not the certain judge. You don't want to have [an] election one time and then a dictator, and go right back to some dictator model." The postponement further erodes any goodwill the US may have built up among the Iraqi people. (Washington Post, Herald-Sun, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- June 29: A report from the Council on Foreign Relations shows the US remains "dangerously unprepared" to handle another major terrorist attack. The biggest problem is that emergency responders such as police, fire, public health and other officials are drastically underfinanced and lack the equipment or training they need. The CFR recommends spending $98 billion beyond the $27 billion the US plans on spending on first responders over the next five years. A Homeland Security spokesman says that the $98 billion estimate is "grossly inflated," and says US officials have already implemented or are in the process of putting in effect some of the report's suggestions. The report found that, on average, fire departments across the country have only enough radios to equip half the firefighters on a shift and breathing apparatuses for only a third. The commission was led by former GOP senator Warren Rudman and included former White House adviser Richard Clarke, former FBI and CIA director William Webster and former military officials, business leaders and Nobel laureates. The CFR report, along with similar reports from the Centers for Disease Control, the RAND corporation, and the National Association of School Resource Officers, is ignored by the administration. (ABC News, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- June 29: A number of British soldiers express their fear that they are acting illegally and may eventually face war crimes charges in international courts. Several express worry that since no clear rules of engagement exist, their firing on civilian rioters and protesters may result in their facing charges. (Sunday Herald)
- June 30: In a Today show interview, Colin Powell tells his listeners, "We have found the mobile biological weapons labs that I could only show cartoons of that day," referring to his February 5 speech before the United Nations. Powell later says that at the time of the Today show appearance, he was unaware that the intelligence he used to make his February claims on had already been debunked by both the CIA and DIA. (Frank Rich [PDF file])
- June 30: The Bush administration complains that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary, including a proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. The Army Times, who reported this, notes, "This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day." The response is heavy and harsh: "We're dealing with absolute financial devastation," says the wife of a member of the California National Guard on extended deployment. "We're on the verge of losing everything. We're civilians who signed up expecting to do duty in the state. We did not expect him to be deployed for years at a time." And anti-war activist Dennis O'Neill says, "[What 'Bring 'em on']' showed the world was that the Commander in Chief has not an ounce of compassion for the men and women that he sent into harm's way." Fellow activist Ashley Decker notes, "And today we are told that we must 'Support Our Troops.' 'Wear a yellow ribbon, wave your flag, support the Bush Administration's War on Terror and War on Iraq.' Questioning the war is equated with deserting our troops or treason. And yet how are the warmongers supporting our troops? By eliminating their healthcare and slashing their pensions." (Army Times/Sacramento Bee/Intervention Magazine)
- June 30: Donald Rumsfeld refuses to admit that US troops are fighting a guerrilla war in Iraq. "The reason I don't use the phrase 'guerrilla war' is because there isn't one," he tells CNN's Jamie McIntyre. McIntyre reads Rumsfeld the Defense Department's definition of the term: "military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular ground indigenous forces," and adds, "seems to fit a lot of what's going on in Iraq." Rumsfeld replies, "It really doesn't." Rumsfeld is contradicted by, among many others, Patrick Lang, the DIA's former chief of Middle Eastern affairs, who says a guerrilla war is "exactly" what is transpiring in Iraq. Retired Army general Barry McCaffrey agrees. The GOP chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, says, "We're now fighting an anti-guerrilla effort." Two weeks later, General John Abizaid says US forces are facing "a classical guerrilla-type campaign." (David Corn)
- June 30: Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is named head of US detention facilities in Iraq. Karpinski has no experience running such facilities. (Guardian)
Bush claims he was told by God to fight al-Qaeda and invade Iraq
- Late June: During negotiations between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and George W. Bush in Aqaba, Jordan, Bush tells Abbas, "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." (Ha'aretz)
- Late June: Saudi agents stage a raid within Malawi that nets five terrorist suspects, one of whom is a Saudi national and the local director of the Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Special Committee for Relief, a charitable foundation overseen by Saudi Arabia's longtime defense minister. The suspects were flown out on a CIA-chartered aircraft against the direction of the Malawi High Court. Some officials believe that the Bush administration is "hyping" the raid to deflect attention from the upcoming release of Congress's report on the 9/11 attacks, which will show extensive Saudi connections to the terrorists. (MSNBC)
- Late June: Iraqi doctors state that the mortality rate of children in Iraq is higher now than it was under Saddam Hussein. They blame lethally polluted water, disease spread by mountains of uncollected garbage, and the failure to quickly restore basic services to the population such as electricity, functioning hospitals, and food distribution. UNICEF says that 70% of all deaths among Iraqi children are caused by diarrhea-related diseases, and says that rates of such illnesses are "much higher than this time last year." It estimates that the number of acutely malnourished children is almost double that of six months ago. (Globe and Mail)
- Late June: US civilian administrator Paul Bremer says of the resistance in Iraq: "We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or...kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country." (Guardian)
- Late June: Dick Cheney convinces Bush to release selected portions of the highly classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, to refute media claims of exaggerations and lies surrounding the promotion of the invasion of that country. Bush needs little persuasion -- he quickly declassifies the NIE and authorizes Cheney to release whatever portions he chooses. This is an extraordinary move. For a federal official to leak any portion of such a highly classified document would quickly mean firing and prosecution. Now Bush is authorizing Cheney to leak selected portions of the NIE to bolster their own claims about Iraq. Bush aides will later argue that Bush has the authority to engage in what they call "automatic declassification." However, the information will not be released in toto -- instead, only selected portions will be released. The leak is not to inform the public, but to continue to mislead and misinform. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- Late June: Conservative columnist Robert Novak receives word that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage wants to see him. Novak has little relationship with Armitage, but he knows that if anyone knows the dish around Washington, Armitage is the man. Novak is particularly hopeful that Armitage will be forthcoming about the clashes between the State Department and the hawks in the Pentagon and in Dick Cheney's office. Novak is also used to being employed as a conduit for information, and misinformation, from the White House. The interview may have been set up by Ken Duberstein, a former senior White House official under Reagan and a premier Washington lobbyist and conservative insider, though Novak claims not to remember any intervention by Duberstein. Novak's interview with Armitage is scheduled right after the July 4 break. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
"I did an interview two weeks ago for Fox News. They invited me to come on their national news show and talk about [his new album] Trouble No More. And I thought, well wait a minute, am I going to have to go on TV and argue with somebody and defend myself? That's not my job. I'm a singer, a songwriter, I'm not going to go on TV and debate and all that bullsh*t. They said, 'No, no, no. This is strictly about the record.' So I said 'OK.' So I go in there and they ask me a few questions about the record. Then all of a sudden the guy says to me, 'You wrote a song that took some potshots at the president.... Well, you saw what happened to the Dixie Chicks.' I said, 'Listen, people have died in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and a bunch of little wars in between so that people will have the freedom to speak out, and then the administration gets on the news and says there's a price for freedom. Yeah, and these dead guys have already paid for it. For people to drive by those women's houses [the Dixie Chicks] and call them on the phone and threaten them is criminal. What the Dixie Chicks did was legal.'" -- John Mellencamp, June 30, 2003, quoted in Buzzflash
