Let's Never Forget the GUILTY
The Spies Who Pushed for War
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Julian Borger
The Guardian, 17 July 2003
As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.
It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.
This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.
According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.
The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.
CONTINUED...
http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2003/jul/17/iraq.usa
Saddam was our man.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Records Could Shed Light on Iraq Group
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post,June 09, 2008
EXCERPT...
As former White House press secretary Scott McClellan wrote in his recently released book, "What Happened," the Iraq Group "had been set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the war to the public."
"The script had been finalized with great care over the summer," McClellan wrote, for a "campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary."
In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, 2002, Card did not mention the group, but he hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.
Two days later, WHIG's product placement was on display. It began with a front-page story in the Times describing Iraq's clandestine purchase of aluminum tubes that, the story said, could be used to produce weapons-grade uranium. The story said that information came from "senior administration officials."
The story also spoke of "hardliners" in the Bush administration being "alarmed that American intelligence underestimated the pace and scale of Iraq's nuclear program before Baghdad's defeat in the gulf war." They "argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found hard evidence that Mr. Hussein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud," the Times story said.
Sickens me.
and K&R!
Posted on October 25, 2010 by WashingtonsBlog
In his recently published memoir, “Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior,” General Hugh Shelton, who served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, called the Iraq war “unnecessary” and said that the Bush team went to war “based on a series of lies.”
Shelton also said that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon officials pushed for war in Iraq “almost to the point of insubordination.”
http://abcnews.go.com/assets/player/walt2.6/flash/SFP_Walt_2_65.swf
This is not some voice from the peanut gallery.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is – by law – the highest ranking military officer in the United States armed forces, and the principal military adviser to the President of the United States. The Chairman outranks all respective heads of each service branch, including the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
Thank you, General Shelton, for confirming what Seymour Hersh and many others have been saying since 2003 (and see this).
SOURCE: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/former-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-iraq-war-based-on-a-series-of-lies.html
PS: After reading the headline, I didn't have to look to know who wrote the reply .
Since any prison outside of Norway is apparently cruel and unusual.
...could give them the time needed to actually learn a productive skill -- something that makes the world a better place.
Know your BFEE: WikiLeaks Stratfor Dump Exposes Continued Secret Government Warmongering
