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
May 2004:
Early Entries
- May: Author Chalmers Johnson reveals that the US is planning on building 14 large, permanent military bases in Iraq. In April 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld contemptuously dismisses a New York Times report that the US was planning on building four bases in Iraq. (Buzzflash)
- May: With transfer of power in Iraq from the CPA to an Iraqi-led government coming at the end of June, CPA adminstrator Paul Bremer and NSC strategic coordinator Robert Blackwill are hunting for a likely candidate to appoint as the US's hand-picked prime minister. The choice must be a Shi'ite, one who can gain the approval of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and someone with whom the US can work. Blackwill pushes Ayad Allawi, a physician and the son of one of Iraq's leading families. Allawi had been in exile in Britain since 1971, and had reportedly survived a Hussein-ordered assassination attempt. Allawi has been a CIA asset for years. UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is incredulous at Blackwill's choice. "The first prime minister of this new Iraq is going to have been a CIA agent for a dozen years?" Brahimi asks. Blackwill retorts, "Yes. You would rather have an Iranian intelligence agent?" Paul Wolfowitz doesn't like Allawi, as Allawi is the main rival of neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi, but Bremer adds his support. "He's the right guy for Iraq," he tells deputy US ambassador James Jeffrey, "but watch it. This guy is not a democrat." Reporter Bob Woodward writes, "So the new leader of Iraq was to be a CIA man who was skeptical of democracy and had little influence with Sistani and the clerics, who held most of the power." (Bob Woodward)
- May: John Maguire, the CIA station chief in Baghdad, sends yet another classified AARDWOLF, or internal communique, to Washington. Maguire tries to communicate his sense of extreme urgency at the increasing effectiveness of the Iraq insurgency. As with his February AARDWOLF, Maguire's memo is ignored.
- About the same time, Condoleezza Rice asks her friend Larry Diamond, a Stanford political science professor, to go to Iraq to assess the situation. The situation is grim, Diamond learns. He reports to Rice, "In my weeks in Iraq, I did not meet a single military officer who felt, privately, that we had enough troops. Many felt we needed (and need) tens of thousands more soldiers and...at least another division or two." Without a large and immediate escalation, Diamond warns, "I feel we are in serious and mounting danger of failing in Iraq." But Diamond's recommendation is not palatable. Publicly, Bush officials, mindful of the re-election campaign, are proclaiming steady progress in Iraq. In Baghdad, Paul Bremer is working furiously to turn over sovereignty to a new interim government, which the White House is touting as a huge new step forward. Experts and politicians outside the government are pondering the ineffectiveness of the US presence in Iraq, and speculating as to the need for tens of thousands more troops, but that isn't politically expedient. To call for so many more troops would be a tacit admission that the Bush strategy is failing. Diamond receives no response to his memo to Rice. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- May: At the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Republicans are reassured when they learn that Vice President Dick Cheney has taken charge of the administration's response. Cheney's decision: hunker down and tough it out. No resignations will be asked for or accepted. The response is completely political, to ensure that the scandal does not affect Bush's chances for re-election in November. Cheney's biggest priority is to keep secret the fact that undercover members of an intelligence unit had been at Abu Ghraib. Cheney helps orchestrate the administration's response, including the effort to place blame, and prosecute, low-level MPs and soldiers and ensure that they, not the higher-ups, take the brunt of the blame. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would take the lead in steering the press coverage away from the White House and the military's senior leadership. "Rumsfeld handled the dirty work and kept the secrets," writes journalist Seymour Hersh, "but he and the two White House leaders [Bush and Cheney] were a team." (Seymour Hersh)
- May: The Pentagon awards a a $293 million contract for coordination of security support to a British firm called Aegis Defense Services. The huge contract has two aspects: Aegis will be the coordination and management hub for the more than 50 other private security companies in Iraq, and it will provide its own force of up to 75 "close protection teams," each made up of eight armed civilians who are to protect staff members of the United States Project Management Office. Such outsourcing has proven to be the source of tremendous problems in Iraq, from the lack of coordination and management by the US administration to the failure to allow the incoming Iraqi government to make such a critical decision. Author P.W. Singer notes that "it seems contrary to the overall American strategic goal of handing over the responsibilities for security to the Iraqis as a prelude to getting out of the business ourselves." The contract repeats the "cost plus" arrangement that has proven so ripe for fraud and abuse in the past. In effect, this deal rewards companies with higher profits the more they spend, and thus is ripe for abuse and inefficiency (as we have seen with the accusations of overbilling that have swirled around Halliburton). "It has no parallel in the best practices of the business world, for the very reason that it runs counter to everything Adam Smith wrote about free markets," Singer writes.
- Just as troublesome is the fact that Aegis is not an established company with experience and a strong reputation. Instead, Aegis has been in existence little more than a year, has worked primarily on antipiracy efforts rather than security coordination, and has never before had a major contract in Iraq. Aegis is not on the State Department's list of recommended security companies in Iraq. The chief executive of Aegis, Tim Spicer, is a former British Army officer turned private warrior who titled his memoir An Unorthodox Soldier. He is infamous in Britain for his role in the Sandline affair of 1998, in which a company he founded shipped 30 tons of arms to Sierra Leone in contravention of a United Nations arms embargo. His client in the case was described by Robin Cook, the British foreign minister, as "an Indian businessman, traveling on the passport of a dead Serb, awaiting extradition from Canada for alleged embezzlement from a bank in Thailand." When Spicer told the press that the British government had encouraged his operation, it nearly brought down Prime Minister Tony Blair. Spicer also was a key character in a 1997 army mutiny in Papua New Guinea. The local army, upset that Spicer had received a $36 million contract to eradicate a rebellion there, instead toppled the government and put him in jail.
- Why the Pentagon would award such a company, with such a CEO, such a contract is hard to fathom. However, Singer reminds us that the private military interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison were originally hired through a computer services contract overseen by an Interior Department office in Arizona. The Aegis deal was awarded by the Army transportation command in Fort Eustis, Virginia, an office with no apparent experience in dealing with the private military industry. Singer writes, "The strength of systems of democracy and capitalism are that they are supposed to be self-correcting and self-improving. When mistakes are made, lessons are learned so that the errors are not repeated. When it comes to the private military world, though, our government seems to be doing its utmost to learn nothing. It repeatedly ignores not just the basic lessons of better business, but also those of smart public policy." (New York Times/CommonDreams)
- May: During the month, Iraqi adminstrator Paul Bremer continues implementation of the neoconservative plan for transforming the Iraqi economy, this time signing nearly a score of executive orders, including orders governing patents and copyrights on music and software. Iraq would now pay fifty years' worth of royalties on music recordings, and twenty years' worth on software. The transformation of the Iraqi economy into a free-market playground for foreign corporate interests is nearly complete. Falah Aljibury, the Iraqi liason to the State Department, says bitterly, "You could say that Saddam was killing them, murdering them. He was awful, he was terrible, but at least the people were living. People don't have livelihood today. You've got 15 million people without food. Does anybody care? Does anybody think if you are hungry and your children are hungry you don't care if you die? And all they tell you is 'Saddam is gone.' Well, thank you very much -- but the second day you need to eat." (Greg Palast)
- May: The new head of the Iraqi intelligence service, former General Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani, comes to the White House for a short visit with Bush and his senior officials. Al-Shahwani is the former head of the Scorpions, the team of CIA-trained Iraqi saboteurs who were to be used to destabilize the Hussein regime (see earlier entries about this organization). Among the officials in the meeting, besides Bush and al-Shahwani, are Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Dick Cheney, and Andrew Card. Al-Shahwani is blunt with Bush: "Sir, I'm going to tell you something," he says. "You need to know the truth. Baghdad is almost surrounded by insurgents. The situation is not improving." The road from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone is a death trap. "If you can't secure the airport highway, you can't secure all of Iraq."
- No one speaks to any extent during al-Shahwani's briefing. He gets the feeling that Bush is surprised by his downbeat assessment, but no one wants his advice. After he winds down, Bush exchanges a few pleasantries with him, has his picture snapped with the Iraqi, and gives him a souvenir tie clip bearing his signature. When the nonplussed al-Shahwani leaves, Rice takes him aside. She asks him what he needs, what they can do for him. Let me know, she says. He says he will be in touch. But he never hears from Rice or anyone at the White House again. He leaves believing Bush doesn't get it. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
50 US soldiers die in Iraq when a mail convoy is bombed; their deaths are not reported by the military
- Early May: Around 50 US military personnel are killed near the city of Najaf when insurgents attack a convoy carrying US mail. Since the troops were killed performing mail-run duties and not killed in an official "attack," their deaths are not announced and their numbers are not added to the total of US dead in Iraq. (my own sources)
- May: Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania join NATO. (CBS News, NATO and UN History)
