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
March 2003
Week One
"Iraq will be the first act in the play of an America coming ashore in Arabia.... It's not just about weapons of mass destruction or American credibility. It's about reforming the Arabic world." -- neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer
Companies given secret information about Iraqi rebuilding contracts before invasion begins
- March: Even before the war in Iraq begins, the Bush administration has considered plans to help rebuild the country after fighting ceased.
Iraq war and occupation
According to news reports in early March, the U.S. Agency for International Development secretly asked six US companies to submit bids for a $900 million government contract to repair and reconstruct water systems, roads, bridges, schools and hospitals in Iraq. The six companies -- Bechtel Group Inc., Fluor Corp., Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, Louis Berger Group Inc., Parsons Corp. and Washington Group International Inc. -- contributed a combined $3.6 million in individual, PAC and soft money donations between 1999 and 2002. Sixty-six percent of that total went to Republicans. The Army Corps of Engineers later reveals that ongoing negotiations and planning between the Department of Defense and Halliburton were classified until now because "[t]his prevented earlier acknowledgement or announcement of potential requirements to the business community." (OpenSecrets, Online Journal) - March: From the Wilderness's Michael Rupport writes, "It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown & Root [Halliburton].
Halliburton
But, increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown & Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown & Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the US military." (Kevin Phillips) - March: Secretary of State Colin Powell announces the 30-member "coalition of the willing" joining the US in its imminent invasion of Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
Powell says that the US will be supported by 15 other nations who are unwilling to have their identities revealed. "Just what you need behind you in time of war," writes journalist Ian Williams, "fifteen shrinking allies who are so convinced of your cause that they want to hide their faces." The list of nations willing to be identified includes Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan. Of the 30, only 4 -- Great Britain, Spain, Australia, and Italy -- are willing to provide serious logistical and military support; none of the four have the backing of a majority of their populations. - Dr. Leslie Jermyn breaks down the rest of the participants. 16 -- Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Nicaragua, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Uzbekistan (who boasts a repressive Stalinist-style government that one might think would be opposed by the Bush regime instead of embraced as an ally) -- are participating either out of a need for economic aid from the US or a desire for such. 3 -- Colombia, the Phillippines, and Turkey -- want US help in quelling resistance within their borders; Turkey in particular wants the invasion and subsequent occupation to help in its own efforts at squashing its Kurdish minority. (It is worth noting just how badly, and arrogantly, US diplomats failed in trying to win Turkish military participation. One veteran US official admits later that Pentagon pressure on Turkey backfired dramatically, alienating Turkey and resulting in far less support for the US invasion than the US had hoped for. The official notes that the "big stick" tactics used to threaten and intimidate the Turks into cooperation were worse than useless.) Afghanistan is virtually a US puppet state and does what it is told; South Korea enjoys little more autonomy in real terms. Japan, Denmark, and the Netherlands want preferential trade deals from the lucrative rebuilding of Iraq in return for their support. 160 nations (not counting the 15 anonymous supporters) either actively oppose the intervention or refuse to have anything to do with it. Of the 30, most provide very limited support. Romania and the Czech Republic commit chemical and demining specialists for non-combat roles. Poland sends 200 troops. Albania sends 70 troops specifically billeted for non-combat roles. So-called "New" Europe (Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Slovakia) offers no troops, but does offer the rights to use their military bases. This is partly in hopes that the US will relocate some of its European-based troops out of Germany, who opposes the invasion, into their countries, with all the economic advantages such relocation will entail.
- Jermyn cites some numbers as an example of the kind of money being batted around: "To give you some idea what this may be worth, the Americans were willing to pay Turkey $15 billion in rental fees and another $6 billion in direct aid to land 62,000 troops in the south of that country for a 'short' war. Having permanent bases is a wet dream for new market economies like Poland. Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania are actively seeking US military and financial support. Uzbekistan and The Philippines, though not in Europe, can be added to the contingent of those at the US Military Base Banquet." Jermyn accurately predicts that Spain's Prime Minister Aznar is committing political suicide by supporting the US, as only 14% of Spaniards support the war. Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua are giving lip service for support along with a few noncombatant troops (none from Colombia, whose troops are all committed in fighting insurgents. Azerbaijan is paying off a debt for US support in its war against Armenia; in addition, it is possibly hoping for an oil pipeline to bring Caspian Sea oil through its country. Ethiopia and Eritrea are embroiled in a long-lasting border dispute; both hope that the US will back their particular versions of the border. South Korea depends on the US to protect it from its North Korean neighbors, but even considering this, President Roh Moo-hyun says that he hopes South Korea's support for the invasion doesn't worsen its relations with its northern neighbor. (Global Aware, Ian Williams, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)
- March: CIA Director George Tenet attempts to classify the entire 2002 CIA
Secrecy of Bush administration
budget in the name of national security. (Stephen Pizzo/Daily Misleader) - March: By a 52-48 vote, the US Senate refuses to approve drilling in the Alaskan
Global warming and the environment
Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. (David Corn) - March: Even before the Iraqi invasion, US conservatives in and out of the Bush administration are discussing the topic of Arab men's particular vulnerability to sexual humiliation, an issue that will arise during the Abu Ghraib investigations of 2004.
Iraq war and occupation
One book frequently cited is The Arab Mind, a study of Arab psychology and culture by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist at Princeton. The book discusses sex as a topic imbued with a tremendous amount of privacy, shame, and repression in traditional Arabic cultures. Patai wrote, "The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women...and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world." Homosexual activity "or any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is never given any publicity. These are private affairs and remain in private." According to one academic, Patai's book is "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior." In their discussions, two themes emerge: that Arabs only understand force, and the biggest weakness of the Arab is shame and humiliation. Widespread speculation will arise as to how untrained and untutored nineteen- and twenty year old soldiers in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons know so much about how to shame and humiliate Arab prisoners, especially after claims by senior military and Pentagon officials that they had no knowledge of the abuses in Abu Ghraib, nor did they give any direction as to how to humiliate and abuse Iraqi prisoners. One government consultant believes that the soldiers were indeed instructed to sexually humiliate and abuse prisoners, and believes that the instructions may have been, at least at the beginning, designed to try to build a network of informants. It was thought that many prisoners would do anything, including spying on and informing on their associates, to avoid dissemination of the photos of them being sexually abused by US soldiers. "I was told that the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could insert back in the population." The idea was that the photographs would be used to blackmail the former detainees into becoming informants inside the insurgency. It will become clear that instructions to sexually abuse and humiliate Iraqi prisoners did indeed come from the top echelons of the Pentagon and perhaps within the White House itself, though no one at those levels will admit to it. (Seymour Hersh)
- Early March: General James "Spider" Marks, the senior military official in charge of the efforts to locate Iraq's WMD stockpiles, is seething with frustration in his Kuwait headquarters.
Iraq war and occupation
The so-called "master list" of WMD sites is worthless, he complains to anyone who will listen. "This is unsat, unsat, unsat," he growls to General Tommy Franks's senior intelligence officer, General Jeff Kimmons, abbreviating the word "unsatisfactory." "Jeff, you need to move this forward, buddy," he says. "I'm not going to call Rumsfeld's office. I'm not going to call [Stephen] Cambone [now the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.] He doesn't know me from Adam. But this is not working." Marks has discovered to his chagrin that a decade's worth of intelligence on Iraqi WMD sites is useless. While Bush and his officials have been escalating the rhetoric, thundering about imminent "mushroom clouds" and warning that Iraq is preparing to use its chemical weapons to attack neighboring targets, none of the intelligence supports any of these dire warnings. Kimmons is afraid to approach Franks for fear of getting screamed at. And no one in Washington seems interested. Marks writes in his diary on March 3, "Still some confusion. Do we secure as we progress thru zone, or treat like an obstacle and mark, cover, bypass?" He is getting no answers. (Bob Woodward) - Early March: The CIA quietly debunks another of the nightmare scenarios trotted out by Bush officials to frighten Americans about Iraq -- this one the idea that Iraq has unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of dropping payloads of biological or chemical weapons either on Israel, on American military and diplomatic installations in the Middle East, or, conceivably, on the US itself.
Iraq war and occupation
Like so many of the specious claims advanced by Bush officials, this one came from a single source, reports of an Iraqi procurement agent who had sought to buy US mapping software for the UAVs in the spring of 2001. But by early March, CIA analysts had concluded that the Iraqi agent's purchase order for the mapping software had been inadvertent; the agent had tried to buy other, more innocuous products from the manufacturer's Web site. The CIA sends a memo to the House Intelligence Committee that says the agency has "no definite indications that Baghdad [was] planning to use WMD-armed UAVs against the US mainland." Later, when American forces are able to examine the UAVs in question, the vehicles turn out to be crudely built constructions of plywood and aluminum that the inspectors doubt can get off the ground, much less carry out attacks against anything or anyone. - Of course, none of this information reaches the public. Meanwhile, the rhetoric from the Bush administration escalates in drama and intensity. As the proof mounts against the Bush claims, the lies escalate. During the weeks before the invasion, Bush will declare that an Iraqi UAV containing bioweapons could be launched from an offshore vessel and strike "hundreds of miles inland." Donald Rumsfeld tells the American people, "We know that [Hussein] continues to hide biological or chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every twelve to twenty-four hours." Colin Powell misrepresents an audiotape from Osama bin Laden to "prove" that al-Qaeda is "in partnership with Iraq." CIA director George Tenet tells Congress that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda operatives in the use of "poisons and gases," once again reviving the now-debunked claims of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (see earlier items). And at his last press conference before the war begins, Bush tells reporters flat out that Saddam Hussein has "financed" al-Qaeda. The breadth and range of the lies is staggering. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- Early March: General John Keane, the vice chief of staff of the Army, asks for a briefing from Jay Garner.
Iraq war and occupation
Keane, who privately detests Rumsfeld's lack of trust in the senior military leadership, has put aside his personal feelings and has become, in essence, the chief of the Army, since Rumsfeld has battled publicly and bitterly with Keane's boss, General Eric Shinseki. Keane had turned down Rumsfeld's request to replace the retiring Shinseki as head of the Army, and in fact is planning to retire. Keane admires Garner's energy and willingness to grapple with the huge issues of reconstruction in Iraq. He asks Garner, "Who are you working for?" Garner replies, "I'm working for the secretary of defense," and Keane says, "Jay, that's the wrong answer. I mean, God Almighty, you've got to be working for General Franks, and de facto General McKiernan. You can't be working for the secretary. There will be a separate channel. I mean, your staff will immediately become dysfunctional from the military command. I mean, you can see it coming. They're not going to deal with you." Garner says, "We'll make it work somehow," but Keane reminds Garner, a retired Army general, of the principle of unity of command. One person has to be in charge in each theater or operation. Franks should be in charge of reconstruction and held accountable for stability. Early on, everything will be military anyway. "Jay, if we've learned one thing in fifteen years, it's this," Keane says. "Come on. Every time we've screwed up we've had problems with this. We don't have to relearn this lesson." Garner says he will make it work because he has to -- the decisions have already been made. Before long, Keane hears the same concerns about governance from Franks's deputy, General John Abizaid, who presses Rumsfeld on the issue. Rumsfeld replies that the issue is being handled by his deputy for policy, Douglas Feith. Abizaid has little respect for Feith's capabilities. As for Garner, he should be reporting to Franks, but Rumsfeld insists on having Garner report directly to him. - Shortly thereafter, Powell meets with Bush and Condoleezza Rice. He brings up the idea of unity of command, and tells Bush that both Garner and Franks separately report to Rumsfeld. "That's not right," Rice counters. Powell insists that it is, indeed, the case. "Wait a minute," Bush interjects. "That doesn't sound right." Rice goes to her office to check, and comes back looking sheepish. "That's right," she admits. Powell says, "You've got a military chain of command that correctly goes to the secretary of defense, to you. But you have also created this alternative, which goes through Garner or whoever the civilian guy is, which also goes to the secretary. ...[Y]ou have to understand that when you have two chains of command and you don't have a common superior in the theater, iit means that every little half-*ssed fight they have out there, if they can't work it out, comes out to one place to be resolved. And that's in the Pentagon. Not in the NSC or the State Department, but in the Pentagon." Powell doesn't believe any of these conflicts would ever be resolved, because Wolfowitz and Feith are running their own little games and had their own agenda to promote Ahmad Chalabi. Rice views the entire discussion as blue-sky and theoretical. If they put Garner under Franks, she points out, that would make Franks in essence the viceroy of Iraq. Bush will not allow that, she says. But the entire situation is how Rumsfeld wants it. As reporter Bob Woodward writes, "Both Franks and Garner reported to [Rumsfeld], giving him the most control -- always his goal." (Bob Woodward)
- Early March: The media is afire with war-lusting pundits and commentators advocating immediate action against Iraq; few voices against the war make it in front of the cameras.
Conservative media slant
Neoconservative William Kristol says on Nightline, "We'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction." Kristol goes on to say, with a straight face, "very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, another prominent neocon, tells MSNBC's Chris Matthews (in response to a prescient question about whether Iraq's post-Hussein government would be dominated by militant Shi'ites) that Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress will be a powerful force for pluralistic democracy in Iraq. Perle says that there is little chance of a civil war after Hussein is overthrown, the war will be "quick," and that it will "not take anything like" General Eric Shinseki's publicly ridiculed estimate of several hundred thousand troops "to maintain peace and order." On another talk show, Perle says condescendingly, "Forgive me. No one is talking about occupying Iraq for five to ten years." Neoconservative columnist William Safire urges Bush to just up and do it: "Smoking guns and hiding terrorists will be found." And conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, going one step beyond, said in the weeks before, "There is one thing that I think everybody has overlooked -- we are going to have retroactive evidence."In other words, the invasion of Iraq will produce the proof that justifies the invasion. But he continued, "Iraq will be the first act in the play of an America coming ashore in Arabia.... It's not just about weapons of mass destruction or American credibility. It's about reforming the Arabic world." - Even more mainstream journalists get into the act. Bob Woodward tells CNN's Larry King on March 6 that "the intelligence shows...there are massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction hidden, buried, unaccounted for" in Iraq. And at a party to celebrate the publication of Secret Empire, a book by New York Times reporter Philip Taubman about high-tech espionage during the Eisenhower years (a book found very useful by the editor of this site), Times reporter Judith Miller, asked whether or not she will journey to Iraq to cover the imminent invasion, gushes, "Are you kidding? I've been waiting for this war for ten years. I wouldn't miss it for the world!" (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- Early March: The Congressional Budget Office releases a devastating report on Bush's domestic economic plans.
Bush's economic policies
It demonstrates that without Bush's tax cuts and the relating spending plans, the government would run around a $900 billion surplus over the next ten years. "In other words," observes writer David Corn, "deficits were not inevitable [as Bush and his officials are wont to claim]. Bush was choosing -- or creating -- them." Even without Bush's new round of tax cuts and spending proposals, Bush is already responsible for creating nearly $246 billion in deficits for 2003. His economic plan will produce $287 billion in deficits for 2003 and $338 billion in 2004 -- breaking the 1992 Reaganomics record of $290 billion. And none of these projections include a dime of spending on Iraq, nor on the new, expensive prescription drug benefit Bush supports. A Washington Post editorial reminds us that Bush used the CBO's forecast of a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years to "prove" that his tax cuts are affordable. Amazingly, Bush officials now insist that the projected surplus, which they had used as the basis for their tax cuts, were never figured in to their economic plans. "We didn't squander a surplus," Treasury Secretary John Snow says on Meet the Press. "We never had it. It was a forecast. It wasn't real dollars in hand." Snow is turning the critics' argument that the Bush tax cuts would vaporize the projected surplus on its head. As Corn observes, "[T]he Bush administration -- two years later -- was expropriating their opponents' position in order to absolve itself." Combine this with their refusal to admit that their 2001 tax cuts had anything to do with the deficit -- they blame it on the "sluggish economy" and the terrorist attacks -- and we are being given a funhouse mirror version of economic reality. The Post notes that even the $1.6 trillion deficit projected by the CBO figures in the $2.6 trillion reserved for Social Security, money supposedly not to be touched. Take that money out and you have a projection of a $4.4 trillion deficit. Add in the huge spending on Iraq, the proposed revamping of the alternative minimum tax, and realistic estimate of future government spending, and the projections become frightening. "How did all this square with Bush's state-of-the-union promise to resort only to 'a deficit that will be small and short-term?'" asks Corn. "It didn't." In April, the CBO will release a new, even grimmer report that revises the 2003 deficit estimate to nearly $400 billion, and states that Bush's tax cuts and budget plans will not improve the economy or create new jobs. Bush's response is to ignore the report. (David Corn)
- March 1: Iraq begins destroying its stockpile of al-Samoud missiles.
Iraq war and occupation
The US characterizes this as too little, too late. (FactMonster)
9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed arrested
- March 1: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief tactician behind the 9/11 attacks, is arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by Pakistani police.
9/11 attacks
The al-Qaeda leader is in possession of a raft of documents and memos on his computer, his cell phone, and on paper, all of which is confiscated. Mohammed was also involved in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and assisted in planning the abortive "Operation Bojinka" of 1995. (The al-Qaeda turncoat who turned Mohammed in collected the $25 million reward for information leading to his capture, and is now living under a new name in the USA.) The same day, the Pakistanis also arrest Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawai, who helped fund the 9/11 attacks. Two weeks later, the Pakistanis arrest Moroccan national Yasser al-Jazeri, who is identified by US officials as a "trusted subordinate of Osama bin Laden." (Washington Post, Michael Scheuer) - March 1: An American citizen, Mohammed Rauf, is arrested in Columbus, Ohio by the FBI on charges of conspiring to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
The FBI, who gives his name as Iyman Faris, holds him incommunicado for six weeks without benefit of counsel or contact with family or friends. In mid-April, in a sealed Virginia courtroom, Rauf/Faris, who is still without a lawyer, "is allowed to plead guilty." He is sentenced, but his sentence is sealed and not made public. This violates one Constitutional right after another, but little if anything is made of Rauf's arrest in the media. It will be revealed on June 23 that Rauf/Faris has been used since March as an FBI plant. (Newsday, Daily Telegraph)
- March 3: Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who will later publicly debunk the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger, writes a scathing indictment of the upcoming war in The Nation.
Iraq war and occupation
In it, he says that the administration's imminent war with Iraq is not about weapons of mass destruction, nor terrorism (as it would only result in more terrorism), nor about liberating oppressed people. Rather, he states, the true objective of the war is an effort to impose a "Pax Americana"on the region. He concludes that because we have no business building empires, we have no business going to war. Though Wilson is not a political partisan, and indeed has close ties to many senior officials in the adminstration of the first Bush, many current Bush officials and associated neoconservatives begin to view him as a political enemy, and begin to plan retaliation. (FindLaw) - March 3: Without informing anyone in the White House or the Pentagon, Jay Garner, head of the Iraqi reconstruction program, goes to the United Nations to see if he can arrange at least some internationalization of the postwar situation in Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
Garner's suggestion to bring other nations into the effort had fallen flat at an NSC meeting in late February. The UN's Louise Frechette tells Garner that the UN would only be involved in humanitarian relief efforts after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and refuses to assign Garner a UN liason officer. So much for help from the UN, Garner thinks. Garner then meets with Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to the UN. Greenstock, who has been working with the UN on getting a second resolution passed concerning UN weapons inspections in Iraq -- an effort that would fail -- looks exhausted. Greenstock approves of Garner's attempts to internationalize the relief and reconstruction efforts. (Bob Woodward) - March 3: A local Ku Klux Klan leader is arrested for planning to blow up a Pennsylvania abortion clinic.
Domestic terrorism
David Hull, Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a small Pennsylvania-based group, is charged with receiving, manufacturing, possessing and transferring a destructive device in violation of the National Firearms Act. Hull, who tried to buy grenades from an FBI informant, told the informant that he was going to "going to blow up abortion clinics," and said he had made his car a "suicide bomb on wheels." The informant saw Hull detonate two pipe bombs on his Amwell Township, Pennsylvania, property during a cross burning event last summer. Around that time Hull allegedly planned to give other Klan members lessons on building pipe bombs and asked the informant to conduct military training at Klan gatherings. In July 2002, Hull attended the "Aryan Nations World Congress," convened by the Pennsylvania faction of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations. He is also a follower of Christian Identity, a racist and anti-Semitic sect whose adherents believe that white people are God's chosen people, descended from the lost tribes of ancient Israel, and that minorities are soulless "mud peoples." David Hull's relative, Mark, described Hull's beliefs as "sick," saying that he "once told me that he believed black people have no souls, and that they're like a dog." (Anti-Defamation League)
- March 4: The US Agency for International Development (USAID) asks three US firms to bid on the job of setting up 180 local and provincial town councils in Iraq after the US military overthrew the government.
Iraq war and occupation
The only firm of the three that will choose to bid, and the winner of the contract, is the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a nonprofit firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina that specializes in drug research and who has no employees with any familiarity with Iraq. While RTI's work will attract little public attention, the town councils RTI will set up are at the center of the Bush administration's plan to hand over power to appointed regional caucuses, a plan so hated by the Iraqi people that it could bring about civil war. Journalist Naomi Klein writes, "The appetite for democracy among Iraqis keeps racing ahead of the plodding plans for 'capacity building' [RTI] drew up before the invasion. In November the Washington Post reported that when RTI arrived in the province of Taji, armed with flowcharts and ready to set up local councils, it discovered that 'the Iraqi people formed their own representative councils in this region months ago, and many of those were elected, not selected, as the occupation is proposing.' The Post quoted one man telling a RTI contractor, 'We feel we are going backwards.' [RTI vice president Robert] Johnson denies that the previous council was elected and says that, besides, RTI is only 'assisting the Iraqis,' not making decisions for them. Perhaps, but it doesn't help that Johnson compares Iraq's councils to 'a New England town meeting' and quotes another RTI consultant observing that the challenges in Iraq are 'the same thing I dealt with...in Houston.' Is this Iraqi sovereignty -- conceived in Washington, outsourced to North Carolina, modeled on Massachusetts and Houston and imposed on Basra and Baghdad?" - Klein says that there is a simple reason why the Bush administration wants a tame interim government instead of allowing for full, free democratic elections. "Washington wants a transitional body in Iraq with the full powers of sovereign government, able to lock in decisions that an elected government will inherit," she writes. "To that end, Paul Bremer's CPA is pushing ahead with its illegal free-market reforms, counting on these changes being ratified by an Iraqi government it can control. For instance, on January 31 Bremer announced the awarding of the first three licenses for foreign banks in Iraq. A week earlier, he sent members of the Iraqi Governing Council to the World Trade Organization to request observer status, the first step to becoming a member. And Iraq's occupiers just negotiated an $850 million loan from the International Monetary Fund, giving the lender its usual leverage to extract future economic 'adjustments.' In other countries that have recently made the transition to democracy -- from South Africa to the Philippines to Argentina -- this period between regimes is precisely when the most devastating betrayals have taken place: backroom deals to transfer illegitimate debts and to maintain 'macro-economic continuity.' Again and again, newly liberated people arrive at the polls only to discover that there is precious little left to vote for. But in Iraq, it's not too late to block that process. The key is to confine any transitional council's mandate to matters directly related to elections: the census, security, protections for women and minorities. And here's the really surprising part: It could actually happen. Why? Because all of Washington's reasons for going to war have evaporated; the only excuse left is Bush's deep desire to bring democracy to the Iraqi people. Of course, this is as much a lie as the rest -- but it's a lie we can use. We can harness Bush's political weakness on Iraq to demand that the democracy lie become a reality, that Iraq be truly sovereign: unshackled by debt, unencumbered by inherited contracts, unscarred by US military bases and with full control over its resources, from oil to reparations. Washington's hold on Baghdad is growing weaker by the day, while the pro-democracy forces inside the country grow stronger. Genuine democracy could come to Iraq, not because Bush's war was right, but because it has been proven so desperately wrong." (The Nation)
- March 4: Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, who heads the Pentagon's Iraq postwar reconstruction planning, gives a rosy, pie-in-the-sky presentation to Bush and the NSC.
Iraq war and occupation
Feith's presentation covers everything from how the US will improve the Iraqis' quality of life to how quickly the US will institute a democratic government and obtain "international participation in the reconstruction." Reporter Bob Woodward characterizes Feith's presentation as "a wish list of high hopes with no how-to." Retired general Jay Garner, the head of the group responsible for implementing the reconstruction efforts, is not invited to the meeting. The next day, Garner meets with national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, and informs her that he had sought, and failed, to gain UN assistance in the reconstruction process [see the March 3 item above]. "They're not seeking additional roles," he says. "They're willing to help but they need to understand our concept. And that's why they kept saying, 'We don't understand your concept. Why are you going it alone?' Rice says nothing. After Garner discusses the need for funding of the basic start-up items -- food, law enforcement, energy -- Rice finally tells her deputy, Stephen Hadley, and the NSC's senior director for defense, Frank Miller, "Let's have it by the time they need it." Garner gets the impression that Rice is just issuing meaningless orders, and there is no real follow-up system in place. He is more right than he realizes. The issue of funding, and the related issue of personnel for security, are bruited about in discussion, but little is specifically set down. Garner knows that Rice and other senior Bush officials are still enamoured of the idea that the postwar period in Iraq will be, in neoconservative Ken Adelman's words, a "cakewalk," requiring little planning or funding. Neither will Rice give him any definitive answers on the overriding issue of governance -- how will the US and the Iraqis set up a government to replace the Hussein regime. On March 7, Garner meets with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Garner complains that he has no idea of what is going on, and doesn't even know when he and his group should fly to Kuwait to begin on-the-ground efforts. No one will tell them even when the invasion will begin. Wolfowitz finally says, "You should already be there." - The issue of governance is a thorny one. At one point, Rumsfeld tossed a question to Garner, "By the way, what are you going to do about de-Ba'athification? Do you have a de-Ba'athification program?" Garner was expected to see to the purge of all the Ba'ath Party members, the members of Hussein's ruling party, from all the ministries. Almost anyone with any authority in Iraq had been forced to join the Ba'ath Party. "You can't do de-Ba'athification of the ministries," Garner replied. "There won't be anybody left." He recommends that the US "take out the top guy. We'll take out the personnel guy," and maybe a few others. "We'll let everybody else return and over time the people in the ministry will begin to point out the bad guys." Rumsfeld says that "sounds reasonable," but doesn't tell Garner that he has no intention of following Garner's advice.
- Garner then takes up the issue of governance with Wolfowitz. It is "the most important issue we have," Garner tells Wolfowitz. "We have to have a team that's putting together the government," a government made up of Iraqis. He says, "[L]et's go out and get the smartest minds in America, and go to Harvard or go to wherever you want to go, and put together a world-class governance team that we can bring over there that begins immediately putting together a government for us." Wolfowitz considers it; later that afternoon, he brings Garner back in and asks, "What do you think about Liz Cheney?" She is Dick Cheney's daughter, a lawyer and mother who had held several posts in the State Department, and currently serves as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs. Her strongest credential is her deep-dyed conservativism, having worked effectively on the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign. Garner is willing to talk to Ms. Cheney, and meets with her the next day in Wolfowitz's office. "I think we need to put together a group that is capable of governance," he tells her. "And we also need to immediately start writing a constitution. We have to start having elections. We need to start having elections in the provinces. And so we need to start all this immediately and let them be involved in what happens." Ms. Cheney comes back later that day with State Department official Scott Carpenter, who had worked on the "Future of Iraq" project, in tow. Garner can't tell her when the invasion will start -- he doesn't know -- but he tells her to get a group ready and plans in place, and be ready to join him when he goes to Baghdad. After she leaves, Wolfowitz tells Garner, "We can't send her over there because she's too high-risk being the vice-president's daughter." (Bob Woodward)
- March 5: Germany, Russia, and France announce that they will "not allow"
Iraq war and occupation
any UN resolution calling for military action against Iraq, in preparation for a US-backed resolution asking for authorization of such action. (David Corn) - March 5: Republican congresswoman Debbie Riddle gives her take on public education to an audience in Austin, Texas:
Republican education policies
"Where did this idea come from -- that everyone deserves free education? ...It's like free groceries. It comes from Moscow. From Russia. Straight out of the pit of hell." (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose)
- March 6: Bush demands that the UN Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
"No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote," Bush asserts. "We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. ...The credibility of the Security Council is at stake." Bush says that there is no more time to wait for UN inspections to complete their task or for any other alternatives, that all-out war is the only option. "The risk of doing nothing, the risk of hoping that Saddam Hussein changes his mind and becomes a gentle soul, the risk that somehow that inaction will make the world safer is a risk I'm not willing to take for the American people." In his diatribe against Hussein, Bush once again makes the specious claim that Hussein and al-Qaeda are allies: "He has trained and financed al-Qaeda-type organizations before, al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations." - 11 days later, Bush reverses course, announcing that the US would not call for a vote and saying, "The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours." Bush makes the decision after ascertaining that council members France and Russia will not support any such resolution, and the US also lacks support from its closest allies such as Canada and Germany. (Slate, Bush on Iraq, David Corn)
- March 6: Bush claims that Saddam Hussein "has trained and financed al Qaeda-type organizations before, al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations." This claim is demonstrably false.
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Bush makes this claim at least eight separate times during a press conference, his last before the invasion of Iraq. The White House later admits that the entire press conference was scripted, with reporters pre-selected by the White House media office and given the questions they were to ask and Bush responding with rehearsed answers. No explanation is given as to why the supposedly independent American media would cooperate with such a farce; ABC's Terry Moran later says the reporters looked "like zombies" during their supine questioning. - Journalist Paul Waldman writes, "Reporters quickly realized that Bush had before him a list of reporters his aides had determined would have their questions answered; indeed, Bush admitted as much. 'This is a scripted....' he said before stopping himself. The reporters chuckled, but went on playing their part, raising their hands as though he might actually call on them. The reporters Bush did call on asked tough questions, like 'How is your faith guiding you?'" (The New York Times columnist Frank Rich notes that this particular questioner, Urban Radio Networks' April Ryan, failed to ask the obvious follow-up question about why almost every religious denomination in the country, including Bush's own, opposes the idea of war with Iraq.) The subsequent reporting on the press conference could have -- and perhaps was -- orchestrated by Karl Rove's office: CNN obligingly scrolls Bush's selected talking points, "People of good will are hoping for peace" and "My job is to protect America" beneath the televised image of Bush even as the press conference is going on. Waldman writes, "One commentator called the press conference 'a mini-Alamo for American journalism, a final announcement that the press no longer performs anything akin to a real function.'" (Strategic News Service/Smalla, MetroBeat)
- March 6: Bush tells the following whopping lie about Iraq: ""I've not made up our mind [sic] about military action.
Iraq war and occupation
Hopefully, this can be done peacefully...." Two days later, Bush says, "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq." Bush has been actively planning to invade Iraq since early 2002, as many items in this site document. (White House/OhMy News) - March 6: The Financial Times's Gerard Baker says of the Bush administration's economic policies,
Bush's economic policies
"...the more important lesson in all of this is how utterly out of touch with economic reality those on the ideological Republican right have become. They now regard the most obvious and widely accepted nostrums of fiscal economics as tantamount to treason. Over the last two years they have been engaged in one of those psychological exercises where if you say something patently false enough times you eventually start to believe it. Deficits do not matter. They do not matter because, if you cut taxes, you will raise economic activity by enough to raise the total tax take.... Some day, at great cost to the American taxpayer and the economy, someone will have to deal with the consequences of this lunacy." (Financial Times/Democrats.com)
UN says Iraq complying with weapons inspections; Bush pulls inspectors, claims Hussein defying UN
- March 7: The UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, reports on Iraq's WMD programs.
Iraq war and occupation
He says that Iraq is cooperating with his inspectors, and that he cannot confirm the presence of any WMDs whatsoever. He indicates that a modicum of time is needed, as Iraq is becoming increasingly forthcoming, and progress is being made at an increasing rate. Instead, on March 17, Bush yanks the inspectors out of Iraq and then claims that Hussein "wouldn't let them in." In an address to the nation on March 17, Bush says, in one of the most egregrious claims of the entire prewar lie-fest, "America tried to work with the United Nations to address this threat because we wanted to resolve the issue peacefully. We believe in the mission of the United Nations." (CNN/OhMy News) - March 7: Great Britain, at the behest of the US, introduces a resolution in the UN Security Council authorizing military action against Iraq if that country fails to demonstrate its unconditional commitment to disarmament by March 17.
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The resolution is not voted on after France and Russia signal they will veto it. But now, a date has been set. (David Corn, Michael Isikoff and David Corn) - March 7: IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei tells the UN Security Council that there is no proof of any nuclear program in Iraq, and states bluntly that the documents used to allege that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger are fakes.
Iraq war and occupation
"The IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents...are in fact not authentic," says ElBaradei. Another IAEA official tells journalist Seymour Hersh, "These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking." Behind closed doors, the US concedes the validity of the IAEA's judgments, but publicly assails the organization. "I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," Dick Cheney later says on Meet the Press. "I think, if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past." Cheney goes on to say, in the face of all evidence, "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." (During the 1990s, the IAEA mounted more than 1,000 inspections in Iraq, mostly without advance warning; sealed, expropriated, or destroyed tons of nuclear material; and destroyed thousands of square feet of nuclear facilities. Its activities formed the baseline for virtually every intelligence assessment regarding Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Cheney's accusations of incompetence by the IAEA are baseless and low.) - Almost ignored is the IAEA's concurrent judgment that the notorious aluminum tubes supposedly purchased by Iraq for a nuclear weapons program were never intended for such use, but instead were bought for construction of conventional rockets. Overall, ElBaradei says, "We have found to date no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq."
- The IAEA had long sought the documents once their existence was made public by the British. After months of recalcitrance by Bush officials, the US finally turned the documents over to Jacques Baute, the director of the IAEA's Nuclear Verification Office. Baute's staff proved the documents to be crude fakes in a few hours. The documents include about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them on Nigeran governmental letterhead. The problems were evident. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of a former Nigeran minister of foreign affairs who had left the office in 1989. Another featured the signature of Nigeran president Tandja Mamadou; the signature was obviously forged. The same document was filled with so many textual inaccuracies that a senior IAEA official says "they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet." The entire concept of Iraq attempting to purchase such large amounts of uranium is also suspect; Niger's entire uranium output is produced by two mines under French control, and their entire output is pre-sold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan, and Spain. "Five hundred tons can't be siphoned off without anyone noticing," says the IAEA official. Baute, according to the official, "confronted the United States with the forgery: 'What do you have to say?' They had nothing to say."
- In checking the validity of the documents, Baute met with Wissam al-Zawahie, the former Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican. He was named in the documents as the Iraqi official who had helped broker the deal. Al-Zawahie, retired and living in Amman, told Baute and other IAEA officials that he had not signed a letter about a uranium purchase in 2000, one of the key allegations in the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Absolutely not, al-Zawahie said. Of course, the IAEA officials could not be sure the former ambassador is telling the truth. Afterwards, Baute began plugging words and phrases into Google, the Internet search engine, as part of his preliminary examination. Within minutes, he found information that cast serious doubt on the documents. According to the papers, the Nigerien president had approved the transaction under the authority of the 1965 Constitution of Niger, but the Nigerien constitution had been rewritten in 1999. Wouldn't the uranium documents be signed under the authority of the current constitution? Further searching revealed other anomalies -- the letterhead, the signatures, the dates, the format of the document were all out of sync. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed by Niger's minister of foreign affairs, Allele Habibou; Habibou had not served in that office for over ten years. The same letter bore the heading "Conseil Militaire Supreme," an organization that had been defunct since 1989. Another document, dated July 30, 1999, referred in the past tense to deals that other documents indicated had been made in 2000. "I was shocked," recalls Baute. Ironically, Baute did with his computer and searches of public records in a single evening what the CIA had failed to do in over a year -- prove the Niger papers were forgeries. On March 3, the IAEA formally notified the US Embassy in Vienna that the papers are fakes.
- Two days later, Colin Powell dismisses the issue of the faked documents by saying, "If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved." Days later, Powell denies to a House of Representatives hearing that anyone in the US had anything to do with forging the documents: "It came from other sources. It was provided in good faith to the inspectors." Condoleezza Rice dismisses the entire incident, telling reporters that "We have never rested our case on nuclear weapons in Iraq on this issue about some uranium from Niger." The CIA's WINPAC supports Rice, saying that it has other reports about a nuclear weapons program in Iraq, but is forced to admit that the information it has is "fragmentary and unconfirmed." And an American official tells the Washington Post simply, "We fell for it." Amazingly, the US media all but ignores the story of the faked documents (with a few exceptions), while continuing to trumpet Iraq's supposed attempts to buy uranium. Cheney's attack on ElBaradei is allowed to pass without question by virtually every journalist who speaks with Cheney. And, of course, the invasion of Iraq begins on March 19. It will not be until April 2003 that the CIA admits the entire allegation is false.
- The question of who produced the fake documents stayed unanswered for years, until revealed by Michael Isikoff and David Corn as most likely an Italian information peddler named Rocco Martino (see earlier items about Martino's scheme), who, through the Italian intelligence agency SISMI, funneled them to Elisabetta Burba of Italy's Panorama magazine. But for years, questions are raised about the source of the forgeries without satisfactory answers. At the time, the IAEA says it was possible someone intercepted faxes in Israel, or possibly someone at the headquarters of the Niger foreign ministry in Niamey produced the documents. "We just don't know," says one official. "Somebody got old letterheads and signatures and cut and pasted." A former Clinton administration official tells reporter Seymour Hersh that he knew of problems since 1997, when a British propaganda program known as Information Operations, or I/Ops, was releasing false information about the Iraqi WMD programs. And a former US intelligence official says that at least one member of the UN inspection team in Iraq arranged for dozens of unverified and undocumented intelligence data, called inactionable intelligence, to be funnelled to Britain's MI6 and passed along to British newspapers. "It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn't move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world," says the official. Clandestine meetings with MI6, often in safe houses in the Washington area, resulted in documents being provided to selected members of the media. "I knew a bit," says one UN official, "but I was never officially told about it." (See the October 15, 2001 entry, and others, for more information.)
- Perhaps the most provocative possibility is the speculation that disgruntled retired CIA clandestine operatives produced the forgeries. "Somebody deliberately let something false get in there," says a former senior US intelligence official. "It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up." He continues, "The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney, they said, 'OK, we're going to put the bite on these guys.'" The former official says he was first told of the fabrication in late 2002, over the Christmas holidays. "Everyone was bragging about it -- 'Here's what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.'" The retired officials have superb contacts within the current agency and were informed in detail of the SISMI intelligence. The idea was for the Iraq hawks in the top levels of the Bush administration to endorse the intelligence, and then look foolish when the forgeries were revealed. But the tactic backfired, according to the official, when the papers won widespread support within the administration. "It got out of control." Another former intelligence official says this story is burning through the intelligence community: "What's telling," he says, "is that the story, whether it's true or not, is believed" -- in Hersh's words, "an extraordinary commentary on the level of mistrust, bitterness, and demoralization within the CIA under the Bush administration. (The New Republic, Guardian, Seymour Hersh, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- March 7: Colin Powell tells the UN Security Council, "So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad?
Iraq war and occupation
...I think our judgment has to be clearly not." He adds, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Powell does not inform the Council that the administration decided to invade in July 2002, and that planning for the invasion stretches back into early 2001. (State Department, Democratic Underground, Seattle Post-Intelligencer) - March 7: The Defense Department reports that Iraqi military forces have obtained military uniforms identical to those worn by US and British troops.
Iraq war and occupation
On March 26, Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke says, "We knew they were acquiring uniforms that looked like US and UK uniforms. And the reporting was that they planned to use them, give them to the thugs, as I call them, to go out, carry out reprisals against the Iraqi people, and try to blame it on coalition forces." The next day, Rumsfeld tells the press, "They put on American and British uniforms to try to fool regular Iraqi soldiers into surrendering to them, and then execute them as an example to others who might contemplate defection or capitulation." None of these statements are true; the evidence does show that Iraq has purchased uniforms for its troops, but there is no evidence of the rest of the claims. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman) - March 7: The British government and populace is "dismayed" at confirmation that in 1986 the Thatcher administration not only secretly financied a British company's sale of the Falluja 2 chlorine plant to Iraq's chemical warfare organization, but insisted on selling a key precursor of the nerve gas sarin to Egypt, knowing it was likely to reach Iraq.
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Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn says that the behavior of the British government was outrageous: "It now appears the British public underwrote the initial cost of Saddam's chemical warfare program." The Falluja 2 plant manufactured large amounts of mustard gas. (Guardian)
