available on-line: “The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction”
Quite a thick report. I would imagine that if you’re going to do a whitewash, you’ll want more than just a couple of pages. The fault, of course, is not entirely the commission’s fault. Why would I call this report a whitewash? As we remember, the president bush didn’t want this report in the first place, and then set it up so that it would exonerate him and his administration:
…our mission is to investigate the reasons why the Intelligence Community’s pre-war assessments were so different from what the Iraq Survey Group found after the war. Second, we were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community. [page 8]
But, as we can see, the dance begins before we even get to page 50:
…Nor do we fault the Intelligence Community for failing to uncover what few Iraqis knew; according to the Iraq Survey Group only a handful of Saddam Hussein’s closest advisors were aware of some of his decisions to halt work on his nuclear program and to destroy his stocks of chemical and biological weapons. [page 47]
…[Curveball] not the only bad source the Intelligence Community used. Even more indefensibly, information from a source who was already known to be a fabricator found its way into finished pre-war intelligence products, including the October 2002 NIE. [page 48]
Now, read these tidbits of recent history:
… Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, said this week that despite all we've heard about weapons development in Iraq their weapons are largely disarmed and that the much-heralded threat is in fact a "framework of lies."
A Framework of Lies March 22, 2002 www.democraticunderground.com
… The administration has admitted that it has no evidence.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton, recently told reporters that in closed sessions in Sept. 2002, administration officials had been asked several times whether they had evidence of an imminent threat from Hussein against U.S. citizens. “They said ‘no,’ ” she said, “Not ‘no, but’ or ‘maybe,’ but ‘no.’ I was stunned. Not shocked. Not surprised. Stunned.” (cited in San Francisco Chronicle 9-20-2002)
No solid evidence that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction or that he would use such weapons if he did.
Scott Ritter, a card-carrying republican who served as a UN chief weapons inspector, courageously stepped forward to refute the administration’s allegations that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the U.S.
When asked if he felt that Saddam Hussein represented a significant threat to the U.S., he replied: “In terms of military threat, absolutely nothing. His military was devastated in 1991 in Operation Desert Storm and hasn't had the ability to reconstitute itself ... In terms of weapons of mass destruction ... we just don't know. We know that we achieved a 90 percent to 95 percent level of disarmament. There's stuff that's unresolved, and until we get weapons inspectors back into Iraq, that will remain a problematical issue ... Diplomatically, politically, Saddam's a little bit of a threat. In terms of real national security threat to the United States, no, none.”
(Cited from Corn 11-30-2001; Paul 12-21-2001; Everest 12-12-2001; Jensen 12-15-2001)
On April 11, he told reporters in Paris, “Iraq does not pose a threat worthy of war. America is marching toward war with Iraq that will have horrific consequences, not only for the United States, but for the entire world. . . . There is nothing left that constitutes either a weapon or a weapons program. So where is the threat?” (cited in AP 3-11-2002)
In his January 28 op-ed piece in the Christian Science Monitor he convincingly argued that much of the so-called evidence comes from a very questionable source - – Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress - whom the UN had stopped using as an informant “once the tenuous nature of his sources and his dubious motivations became clear.” (Ritter 1-28-2002)
In his January 28 op-ed piece in the Christian Science Monitor, he wrote: “The media and government are misrepresenting the facts in order to promote their views.” (Ritter 1-28-2002)
“While we were never able to provide 100 percent certainty regarding the disposition of Iraq's proscribed weaponry, we did ascertain a 90-95 percent level of verified disarmament. This figure takes into account the destruction or dismantling of every major factory associated with prohibited weapons manufacture, all significant items of production equipment, and the majority of the weapons and agent produced by Iraq.”
“With the exception of mustard agent, all chemical agent produced by Iraq prior to 1990 would have degraded within five years (the jury is still out regarding Iraq's VX nerve agent program - while inspectors have accounted for the laboratories, production equipment and most of the agent produced from 1990-91, major discrepancies in the Iraqi accounting preclude any final disposition at this time.)”
“The same holds true for biological agent, which would have been neutralized through natural processes within three years of manufacture. Effective monitoring inspections, fully implemented from 1994-1998 without any significant obstruction from Iraq, never once detected any evidence of retained proscribed activity or effort by Iraq to reconstitute that capability which had been eliminated through inspections.”
“In direct contrast to these findings, the Bush administration provides only speculation, failing to detail any factually based information to bolster its claims concerning Iraq's continued possession of or ongoing efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. To date no one has held the Bush administration accountable for its unwillingness - or inability - to provide such evidence.”
2002. Boston Globe.
… In 1999, a committee under the UN Security Council concluded that Iraq’s primary biological weapons facility “had been destroyed and rendered harmless.” (cited in Pilger 4-5-2002)
… Hans von Sponneck, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq from 1998-2000, wrote in 2001, “Iraq today is no longer a military threat to anyone. Intelligence agencies know this. All the conjectures about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq lack evidence.” (cited in Everest 2001; Stop the war against Iraq.org n.d.)
In addition to these, both condi rice and powell stated in 2000 that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, and was “contained”. Now I know that the president bush doen’t read much, and is intellectually lazy, but these facts were known well before he started his public push for war with Iraq. Common sense alone says it would have been impossible for Iraq to develop and amass the stores of weapons the bush administration said they had. Said with certainty. However… Iraq did not have the infrastructure required for such an undertaking. And with the brutal sanctions in place, did not have the ability to build it. Saddam built a lot of palaces, but no weapons facilities. Apparently, before the war, millions of common people around the world had that common sense that said bush was lying. And now the commission report wishes us to believe that the professional intelligence analysts at the CIA didn’t.
Of course, we found out later from wolfowitz (the new World Bank honcho) that the administration was determined to invade Iraq, and they settled on the WMD accusations as the only way to sell it to the American public. And sell it they did.
Now, if these claims were shown to be false before they were even made, and common sense would tell us they were false, where did that ‘intelligence information’ that was so flawed come from? A glaring ommission in the commissions report is the Office of Special Plans set op in the pentagon by wolfowitz. The purpose? To cherry pick rumors and unproven allegations fed to them by Chalabi and others, and stovepipe it through to the decision makers, bypassing the usual analysis.
The Truth Leaks Out
by Ruth Rosen
Published on Monday, March 15, 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle
…Today, we also know why there was a so-called "intelligence failure." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and company established their own private Pentagon intelligence unit -- the Office of Special Plans -- to seek evidence that confirmed only what they believed. CIA Director George Tenet, for his part, failed to expose the administration's manipulation of intelligence.
In "The New Pentagon Papers," published last week on Salon.com, Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired lieutenant colonel formerly assigned to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, writes, "I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to the Congress." through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to the Congress."
Empire of Nothing
http://www.motherjones.com
June 2, 2003
… Dan Plesch and Richard Norton-Taylor, defense experts for The Guardian, report on quite another Powell, drawing on a secret transcript of a meeting between his British counterpart and him just before his UN performance. The document has been circulating in NATO diplomatic circles, possibly leaked by diplomats who felt betrayed by post-war WMD developments.
"Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq ... Their deep concerns ... emerged at a private meeting between the two men shortly before a crucial UN security council session on February 5. ...
Mr Powell shared the concern about intelligence assessments, especially those being presented by the Pentagon's office of special plans set up by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. ... he told Mr Straw he had come away from the meetings [with US intelligence] 'apprehensive' about what he called, at best, circumstantial evidence highly tilted in favour of assessments drawn from them, rather than any actual raw intelligence. Mr Powell told the foreign secretary he hoped the facts, when they came out, would not 'explode in their faces'." …
Well, I’ve got to say that the facts did indeed ‘explode’, but not in their faces. They exploded in ours. The president bush set up his commission by ensuring that it would not investigate his administration. He knows it could not stand against that scrutiny. No one in the administration has suffered any consequence due to their involvement with this massive crime. And now the blame will be placed on vague ‘intelligence failures’, and on the shortcomings of the intelligence agencies. If we will recall, this is the same ploy used in the 9-11 investigation. Another commission set up by the president bush exonerates him, and faults the FBI and CIA for failing to ‘connect the dots’. And even then, he had pages removed to avoid scrutiny of the relationship of the bush family and the Saudis.
And so, another investigation, another whitewash. Nothing new.
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