Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Dick Cheney - Speech to VFW National Convention - August 26, 2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
George W. Bush - Speech to UN General Assembly - September 12, 2002

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.
Ari Fleischer - Press Briefing - December 2, 2002

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
Ari Fleischer - Press Briefing  - January 9, 2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
George W. Bush - State of the Union Address - January 28, 2003

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.
Colin Powell - Remarks to UN Security Council - February 5, 2003

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
George W. Bush  - Radio Address - February 8, 2003

If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.
Colin Powell - Interview with Radio France International - February 28, 2003

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
Colin Powell - Remarks to UN Security Council - March 7, 2003

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.
George W. Bush - Address to the Nation - March 17, 2003

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
Ari Fleisher - Press Briefing - March 21, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
Gen. Tommy Franks - Press Conference - March 22, 2003

I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman - Washington Post, p. A27 - March 23, 2003

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark - Press Briefing - March 22, 2003

We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld - ABC Interview - March 30, 2003

Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.
Neocon scholar Robert Kagan - Washington Post op-ed - April 9, 2003

But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.
Ari Fleischer - Press Briefing - April 10, 2003

We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.
George W. Bush - NBC Interview - April 24, 2003

There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld - Press Briefing - April 25, 2003

We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.  (yeah, until his minions plants some WMDs...)
George W. Bush - Remarks to Reporters - May 3, 2003

I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
Colin Powell - Remarks to Reporters - May 4, 2003
 

We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld  - Fox News Interview -  May 4, 2003
 

I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.
George W. Bush - Remarks to Reporters - May 6, 2003

U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleeza Rice - Reuters Interview - May 12, 2003

I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.
Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne  - Press Briefing - May 13, 2003

Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.
Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps - Interview with Reporters - May 21, 2003

Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.
Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff - NBC Today Show interview - May 26, 2003

Rummy equivocates on previous lies:
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
Donald Rumsfeld - Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations  - May 27, 2003

For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
Paul Wolfowitz - Vanity Fair interview - May 28, 2003

It was a surprise to me then — it remains a surprise to me now — that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there.
Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force - Press Interview - May 30, 2003

Do I think we're going to find something?  Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there's a lot of information out there."
Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, Defense Intelligence Agency - Press Conference - May 30, 2003

With September 11 as his ideological backdrop, Rumsfeld decided in autumn 2001 to establish a new intelligence agency, independent of the CIA and the Pentagon, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP). He put his deputy, Wolfowitz, in charge. The pair were dissatisfied with the failure of the CIA among others to provide firm proof of both Saddam's alleged WMD arsenal and links to al-Qaeda.

Regime change in Iraq had been a long-term goal of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Even before Bush took over the presidency in September 2000 the pair were planning 'regime change' in Iraq. As founders of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the USA's most extreme neo-con think-tanks, the pair were behind what has been described as the 'blueprint' for US global domination -- a document called Rebuilding America's Defenses.

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great-power rival and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

That was the policy blueprint, but to deliver it Rumsfeld turned to the Office of Special Plans. Put simply, the OSP was told to come up with the evidence of WMD to give credence to US military intervention.
-----
The British intelligence source said the best Humint on Saddam was held by the French who had agents in Iraq.

'French intelligence was telling us that there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD program That's why France wanted a longer extension on the weapons inspections. The French, the Germans and the Russians all knew there were no weapons there -- and so did Blair and Bush as that's what the French told them directly. Blair ignored what the French told us and instead listened to the Americans.'

One key tactic of the British and United States governments in their campaign on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction was to talk up suspicions and to portray possibility as fact. The clearest example was the quotation and
misquotation of the reports of United Nations weapons inspectors.

Iraq claimed it had destroyed all its prohibited weapons, either unilaterally or in co-operation with the inspectors,
between 1991 and 1994. Although the inspectors were able to verify that unilateral destruction took place on a large
scale, they were not able to quantify the amounts destroyed.

For example, they were able to detect that anthrax growth media had been burnt and buried in bulk at a site next to
the production facility at al-Hakam. There was no way - and there never will be - to tell from the soil samples the
amount destroyed. As a result, UN inspectors recorded this material as unaccounted for: neither verified destroyed
nor believed to still exist.

Translated into statements by the British and US governments, it became part of "stockpiles" that they claimed Iraq
was hiding from the inspectors. Both governments knew UN inspectors had not found any nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons in Iraq since at least 1994, aside from a dozen abandoned mustard shells, and that the vast
majority of any weapons produced before 1991 would have degraded to the point of uselessness within 10 years.
-------
Even the most high-profile defector from Iraq - Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and director of Iraq's
weapons programs - told UN inspectors and British intelligence agencies in 1995 that Iraq had no more prohibited
weapons. And yet Britain's dossier last September repeated the false claim that information "in the public domain
from UN reports ... points clearly to Iraq's continuing possession, after 1991, of chemical and biological agents and
weapons produced before the Gulf War".

There is no UN report after 1994 that claims that Iraq continued to possess weapons of mass destruction. This was
well known in intelligence circles. That such a claim could appear in a purported intelligence document is a clear
sign that the information was "pumped up" for political purposes, to support the case for an invasion.

A U.S. Defense Department report in September 2002 found ``no reliable information'' proving that Iraq had chemical
weapons, even as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was saying the country had amassed stockpiles of the
banned arms.

``There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical
weapons, or whether Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production
facilities,'' a report by the Defense Intelligence Agency said in a summary page obtained
by Bloomberg News.
------
The Defense Intelligence Agency's uncertainty about Iraqi weapons extended to germ
warfare programs, the summary suggests. ``Iraq is assessed to possess biological agent
stockpiles that may be weaponized and ready for use,'' its report said. ``The size of those
stockpiles is uncertain and is subject to debate. The nature and condition of those stockpiles also are unknown.''

``The DIA report suggests that before the Iraq War, the U.S. intelligence community did not have hard evidence that
Saddam Hussein possessed large stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents that posed an imminent threat
to U.S. national security,'' said Jonathan Tucker, a senior research fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace and a former
United Nations weapons inspector, also informed of the summary page contents by Bloomberg.

The Defense Intelligence Agency's findings in the report, ``Iraq: Key Weapons Facilities -- An Operational Support
Study,'' are similar to those of other DIA reports on Iraq's suspect weapons programs, a U.S. military intelligence
official said.

Existence of the study was disclosed by U.S. News & World Report in its June 9 edition.

Blix Criticizes U.S. Data

Hans Blix, the UN's chief arms inspector, criticized the quality of intelligence about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction given to him by the U.S. and the U.K.

Inspectors found nothing when they followed up U.S. and U.K. leads at suspected Iraqi weapons sites, Blix said in
an interview aired today by British Broadcasting Corp. radio. He yesterday presented his final report on Iraq to the
UN Security Council.

``Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none were there any weapons of mass destruction,
and that shook me a bit, I must say,'' Blix told the BBC. ``I thought: My God, if this is the best intelligence they have
and we find nothing, what about the rest?''

Scott Ritter, an American who headed UN arms inspection teams from 1991 to 1998, said in an interview today with
Switzerland's daily Le Temps that the U.S. and the U.K. should admit they lied about Iraqi weapons. Ritter said
allied haven't found evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear arms programs ``because it's impossible to find
something that doesn't exist.''
--------
``It's pretty clear that the intelligence judgments concerning Iraq weapons of mass destruction did not undergo a
major change between the Clinton and Bush administrations,'' Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith told reporters
at a Pentagon press conference in Arlington, Virginia.

Reporting on a poll of more than 15,000 people in 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority,
conducted in May by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center:

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said he had been surprised by the extent to which "the bottom
has fallen out" in the Muslim world.

"Anti-Americanism has deepened, but it has also widened," he said. "You now find it in the far reaches of Africa - in
Nigeria, among Muslims - and in Indonesia. People see America as a real threat. They think we're going to invade
them."
----
Only 38 percent of Spaniards now have a positive opinion of the United States...

The hostility in Spain is not limited to U.S. policies but extends to Americans as people -
fewer than half have a positive impression. But approval of "the American people" remains
solid in France, where 58 percent have a favorable view, Germany (67 percent), Italy (77
percent, up 3 points since last summer) and Britain (80 percent).

Asked if they had an unfavorable view of the United States because of George W. Bush or
a more general problem with America, a majority in Western Europe blamed the
president. Nearly three quarters in France and Germany blame Bush, as do two-thirds in
Italy and six out of 10 in Britain.
-----
A predicted causalty of Shrub's Iraq war- the war on terrorism is coming to fruitation:

A further consequence of the war is a new decline in post-9/11 sympathy for the United States. Since last summer,
support for America's war on terror has dropped to 60 percent from 75 percent in France, to 60 percent from 70
percent in Germany and to 51 percent from 73 percent in Russia.
----
With the exception of Israel, Nigeria and the United States itself, all the countries surveyed judge U.S. policies to be
too unilateralist.  Fully 85 percent of the French said they felt that the United States did not take into account the
interests of other countries. At least seven out of 10 shared this sentiment in South Korea, Spain, Russia and
Canada, as did two thirds in Australia and Germany.
 

WASHINGTON — The former civilian head of the Army said Monday it is time for the Pentagon to admit that the
military is in for a long occupation of Iraq that will require a major commitment of American troops.

Former Army secretary Thomas White said in an interview that senior Defense officials "are unwilling to come to
grips" with the scale of the postwar U.S. obligation in Iraq. The Pentagon has about 150,000 troops in Iraq and
recently announced that the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's stay there has been extended indefinitely.

"This is not what they were selling (before the war)," White said, describing how senior Defense officials downplayed
the need for a large occupation force. "It's almost a question of people not wanting to 'fess up to the notion that we
will be there a long time and they might have to set up a rotation and sustain it for the long term."
-----
Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz criticized the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, after
Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." Wolfowitz
called Shinseki's estimate "wildly off the mark."
 

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon project to develop a digital super diary that records heartbeats, travel, Internet chats,
everything a person does, also could provide private companies with powerful software to analyze behavior.

That has privacy experts worried.

Known as LifeLog, the project aims to capture and analyze a multimedia record of everywhere a subject goes and
everything he or she sees, hears, reads, says and touches. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or
DARPA, has solicited bids and hopes to award four 18-month contracts beginning this summer.
------
Rather, the agency calls it a tool to capture "one person's experience in and interactions with the world" through a
camera, microphone and sensors worn by the user.
------
But defense analyst John Pike of Global Security.org is dubious about the project's military application.

"I have a much easier time understanding how Big Brother would want this than how (Defense Secretary Donald H.)
Rumsfeld would use it," Pike said. "They have not identified a military application."
-----
Pentagon contracting documents give a sense of the project's scope.

Cameras and microphones would capture what the user sees or hears; sensors would record what he or she feels.
Global positioning satellite sensors would log every movement. Biomedical sensors would monitor vital signs.
E-mails, instant messages, Web-based transactions, telephone calls and voicemails would be stored. Mail and
faxes would be scanned. Links to every radio and television broadcast heard and every newspaper, magazine, book,
Web site or database seen would be recorded.

More "Offical" Info at: http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Solicitations/PIP_03-30.html

WASHINGTON - Foreigners detained as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States were held too long without being told of charges against them and were subjected to "unduly harsh"
conditions of confinement, a Justice Department audit showed on Monday.

The department's inspector general found "significant problems" in how authorities handled the 762 foreigners who
were detained in cities around the United States for immigration violations during the investigation into the Sept. 11
hijacked airliner attacks.

Some detainees were locked up almost continuously, were moved around in handcuffs and leg irons, subjected to
abuse and had their cell lights kept on day and night.

For example, they were locked in their cells for at least 23 hours a day, moved in handcuffs and leg irons and
allowed only one legal telephone call per week and one social call a month. In Brooklyn, prison officials kept two
lights on in the detainees' cells 24 hours a day and subjected them to verbal and physical abuse.

The report said the FBI made little effort to distinguish between foreigners who were subjects of the terrorism
investigation and those found accidentally as agents involved in the investigation followed up on a lead.
----

Oh yeah, of the 762  detainees Asscroft admits to, guess how many have been charged with terrorism....  NONE!

Investigative reports by the likes of the BBC, CBS' 60 Minutes and other news outlets have shown that the military
version of events played up a drama that wasn't that dramatic.

Among the biggest revelations: Iraqi soldiers had abandoned their post at the hospital days before U.S. special
forces moved in; American GIs were offered the use of a master key, but opted to kick the doors down Rambo-style
instead; Lynch did not return fire at her Iraqi captors nor was she wounded or mistreated, as initially reported; and,
perhaps the biggest surprise of all, days before her "rescue," Lynch's doctors attempted to take her via ambulance
to American forces but were forced to turn back after being shot at.
------
Meanwhile, Lynch's family has remained mum on the conflicting reports.

"We're really not supposed to talk about that subject," Lynch's father, Greg, told the Associated Press. "It's still an
ongoing investigation and we can't talk about nothing like that."

Lynch herself is reportedly suffering from memory loss and doesn't recollect anything about her ordeal.
(Oh, how convient for Shrub and the idiots that planned the lies)

Sacked Iraqi Troops Threaten Attacks on U.S. Forces
by Huda Majeed Saleh and Michael Georgy
Reuters  - Monday, June 2, 2003

BAGHDAD - Thousands of sacked Iraqi soldiers marched on the U.S.-led administration Monday and threatened to
launch suicide attacks on American troops in Baghdad unless they were paid wages and compensation.

More than 3,000 angry soldiers from the disbanded Iraqi army massed outside the administration headquarters, in a
presidential palace, shouting slogans and vowing a wave of attacks on U.S. troops unless they got their money.

"All of us will become suicide bombers," said Khairi Jassim, a former warrant officer. "I will turn my six daughters into
bombs to kill the Americans."

Hopefully they will not target our soldiers, instead, they should target the idiots who sent our troops there....

The warmongers attempted to use a carrot in the form of billions in aid to Turkey in hopes they would agree to join the "colilition of the bribed" against Iraq.  Now Shrub's using the stick on Balkan countries to force them agree to exempting them and their henchmen from the Internation Criminal Court for their war crimes.

The US is turning up the heat on the countries of the Balkans and eastern Europe to secure war crimes immunity
deals for Americans and exemptions from the year-old international criminal court.

In an exercise in brute diplomacy which is causing more acute friction with the European
Union following the rows over Iraq, the US administration is threatening to cut off tens of
millions of dollars in aid to the countries of the Balkans unless they reach bilateral
agreements with the US on the ICC by the end of this month.
----
"Blatant hypocrisy," said Human Rights Watch in New York on Tuesday of the US policy
towards former Yugoslavia.

Threatened with the loss of $73m (£44m) in US aid, Bosnia signed the exemption deal
last week just as Slovenia rejected American pressure and cut off negotiations.

Of all the peoples of former Yugoslavia, the Bosnians suffered the most grievously in the
wars of the 1990s, from the siege of Sarajevo to the slaughter of Srebrenica.

The Bosnians signed reluctantly, feeling they had no choice. Former Yugoslavia is particularly central to the US
campaign to exempt Americans from the scope of the ICC because there are US troops in Bosnia and Kosovo.

---
Under President Bill Clinton, Washington signed the treaty establishing the court. But the US did not ratify the treaty
and Mr Bush rescinded Mr Clinton's signature.

While the Slovenes have said no to the Americans, probably forfeiting $4m in US aid, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia
are now being pressed to join the 39 other countries worldwide with which Washington has sealed bilateral pacts
granting Americans immunity from war crimes.

"While the United States rightly insists that the former Yugoslav republics must fully cooperate with the [Hague
tribunal], it is turning the screws on the very same states not to cooperate with the ICC," said Human Rights Watch.

Croatia is sitting on the fence, refusing to accept what the prime minister, Ivica Racan, dubbed "an ultimatum", but
still hoping to reach a compromise with the US. The American ambassador in Zagreb published a letter in the
Zagreb press last week warning that Croatia would lose $19m in US military aid if it did not capitulate by July 1.

In Serbia, too, where the issue of war crimes is explosive, the US pressure is being attacked as a ruthless display of
double standards.

The EU has sent letters to all the countries in the region advising them to resist the US demands and indicating that
surrender will harm their ambitions of joining the EU.

Regional leaders are waiting to see what kind of offers or promises this month's EU summit in Greece makes to the
region before deciding on their stance towards the ICC. One idea being floated is that the EU could make up the lost
US aid money in return for Balkan refusal to toe the American line.

Although the eight east European countries joining the EU next year are expected to follow the Brussels policy and
reject the US demands, the Poles in particular are also being pressed to reach an immunity deal with Washington.

Sources in Warsaw say that the US state department has made several requests in recent weeks for a deal by July
1. Poland is the biggest American ally in the region but has not yielded to the US requests.
 

BAGHDAD-Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were all destroyed years ago, a former senior official at the Iraqi
information ministry during Saddam Hussein's rule said yesterday.

Amir al-Helou, previously editor-in-chief of the Baathist government weekly Alif Baa magazine, has resurfaced since
the U.S.-led war as a contributor to Iraq's mostly widely read newspaper, the London-based daily Azzaman.

"The story of weapons of mass destruction is all a lie and the Americans know that very well," Helou said.
----
"We swallowed the (U.S.) bait and launched a campaign to defend ourselves against accusations that we had
weapons of mass destruction," Helou said.

Although he now writes articles critical of Saddam's government, he reiterated its line on banned weapons.

"Iraq used to have weapons of mass destruction in 1991 but did not use them against the (U.S.-led) coalition forces
in the war that drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait."

All such weapons, he added, had been destroyed either by U.N. arms inspectors or U.S. air strikes during the 1991
war.

"Washington and London knew all about Iraq's banned weapons because the West helped Iraq to acquire them,"
Helou said.

WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress on Wednesday rebuffed calls by Democrats for a full-blown investigation
into whether the Bush administration misread or inflated the threats posed by Iraq before going to war.

---
"There seems to be a campaign afoot by some to criticize the intelligence community
and the president for connecting the dots, for putting together a picture that seemed all
too obvious," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, of Kansas.

The Republican chairmen of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services
Committee joined Roberts in rejecting calls for an investigation.
----
The White House has stood by its position that Iraq was pursuing banned weapons, but officials have begun to talk
of finding weapons "programs" or "capabilities" instead of the weapons themselves.

President George Bush has been accused of quietly extending secrecy restrictions while the country is preoccupied with Iraq. He has signed an executive order that will delay the release of millions of government documents and make it easier for presidents to keep secret the details of their activities when in power.

There is concern that for the first time the vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been given the power to classify information. Mr Cheney is not known for his commitment to open government and has sought to head off attempts to discover which energy corporations he has consulted with since he took office.

Mr Bush's new order postpones for three more years the declassification of documents which were due to become available to the public on April 17. The administration has given itself more discretion to keep information classified indefinitely under a broad definition of national security.

The New York Times criticised the moves and their timing in an editorial yesterday. "Taken together, they are reminders that this house is obsessed with secrecy."

The White House defended the decision. "It's important to understand that documents will continue to be released," said a spokesman. "It will just give agencies more time to complete their reviews."   (Sure!  Actually, it's more time to destroy and doctor the evidence of their lies and deceit.)

The  Exec Order :  Further Amendment to Executive Order 12958, As Amended, Classified National

The Bush administration is planning a secret meeting in August
to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear
weapons, including "mini-nukes", "bunker-busters" and neutron
bombs designed to destroy chemical or biological agents,
according to a leaked Pentagon document.

The meeting of senior military officials and US nuclear scientists
at the Omaha headquarters of the US Strategic Command would
also decide whether to restart nuclear testing and how to
convince the American public that the new weapons are
necessary.

The leaked preparations for the meeting are the clearest sign yet
that the administration is determined to overhaul its nuclear
arsenal so that it could be used as part of the new "Bush
doctrine" of pre-emption, to strike the stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons of rogue states.
----
"How can we possibly go to the international community or to
these countries and say 'How dare you develop these weapons',
when it's exactly what we're doing?" Mr Schwartz said.

The Full Article

Perle - Pentagon hawk linked to UK intelligence company
Richard Perle is director of firm selling terror alert software
David Leigh
The Guardian - Friday March 21, 2003

Amid general stock market jitters, one British company linked to
the American hawk Richard Perle and dealing with secret
intelligence is among the few UK commercial organisations that
stand to profit from the Iraq war and its accompanying worldwide
terrorist alert.

The Cambridge-based Autonomy Corporation, with Mr Perle's
help, is secretively selling advanced computer eavesdropping
systems to intelligence agencies around the world.

Its software simultaneously monitors hundreds of thousands of
intercepted emails and phone conversations while they are
taking place.

The Full Article

The US has a long history of seeking to assassinate leaders
who have challenged American interests. The plots, some of
them farcical, have generally been unsuccessful or not
implemented, though some targets have fallen in later
US-inspired coups.

The Full Article list all of them (well, at least the ones we know about)

William Pfaff writes: "The Bush administration, determined to remake the Middle
East by remaking Iraq, now has the bit between its teeth... This is not good
news. There are three things to be said about the neoconservatives and what they
want. The first is that they act out of fear... Second, they are naive... The
problem in the Middle East is not 'Arabs.' The problem is a powerful historical
culture that functions on categories of value absolutes and religious
certainties hostile to the pragmatic relativisms of Western democracy. Military
conquest and good intentions will not change that. Finally, the neoconservatives
are fanatics. They believe it is worth killing people for unproved ideas.
Traditional morality says that war is justified in legitimate defense.
Totalitarian morality justifies war to make people or societies better."

NY Times reports, "For some of the reconstruction work in and around Iraq, the
United States Army Corps of Engineers confidentially awarded a one-year contract
worth up to $100 million on April 1 to the Perini Corporation, which had revenue
of barely $1 billion last year. The agency released a brief statement about the
award on April 4, but Perini did not receive clearance to issue its own
statement about the significant chunk of business until April 8. By then, its
stock had climbed more than 40%... 'There is no secret that is known to 30
bureaucrats,' Professor John Coffee added. 'As soon as it's known that broadly,
nothing is more foreseeable than that this information will leak and affect the
market'" - and that BushFeld cronies will cash in "big-time." We demand a
Special Prosecutor for the corrupt awarding of Iraq occupation contracts!

"We, the undersigned, believe George W. Bush should be indicted for the following war crimes:

1. George W. Bush ordered a "War of Aggression" against Iraq. This constitutes a "war of aggression" that was outlawed at the Nuremberg Trials and in the United Nations Charter: - Iraq never attacked the United States or threatened an attack. - Iraq never provided material support to any terrorist group that attacked the United States. - At the time of the US attack, Iraq was nearing full compliance with UN Resolution 1441 and prior resolutions requiring disarmament. - George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in order to bring about a "regime change," which was never authorized by a UN resolution.

2. George W. Bush ordered the bombing of the city of Baghdad, with 5 million innocent civilians, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

We call upon all responsible international bodies to indict, convict, and punish George W. Bush for his crimes." Sign the petition and spread the word!

http://democrats.com/warcrimes
 

"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero .  .  .  assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war.  It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."

George H.W. Bush, in A WORLD TRANSFORMED, 1998

 If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
 If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
 If the terrorists are frisky,
 Pakistan is looking shifty,
 North Korea is too risky,
 Bomb Iraq.

 If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
 If we think someone has dissed us, bomb Iraq.
 So to hell with the inspections,
 Let's look tough for the elections,
 Close your mind and take directions,
 Bomb Iraq.

 It's "pre-emptive non-aggression", bomb Iraq.
 Let's prevent this mass destruction, bomb Iraq.
 They've got weapons we can't see,
 And that's good enough for me
 'Cos it's all the proof I need
 Bomb Iraq.

 If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
 If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
 If you think Saddam's gone mad,
 With the weapons that he had,
 (And he tried to kill your dad),
 Bomb Iraq.

 If your corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq.
 If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq.
 If your politics are sleazy,
 And hiding that ain't easy,
 And your manhood's getting queasy,
 Bomb Iraq.

 Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
 For our might knows not our borders, bomb Iraq.
 Disagree? We'll call it treason,
 Let's make war not love this season,
 Even if we have no reason,
 Bomb Iraq.

Plans to allow a national conference of Iraqi groups to elect an interim administration may be scrapped, a senior US official in the country has suggested.  Instead, he said, a political council made up of 25 to 30 Iraqis may be appointed following consultation between the US-led coalition authorities and political and religious groups.

Since March 17, 2003, I have been trying without success to get a direct answer to one simple question: Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address?

 Prime Minister Tony Blair last night insisted he had secret proof
 that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq in his
 strongest signal yet that coalition forces believe they may have
 begun to uncover leads to Iraq's alleged deadly arms cache.

 Stung by claims that the Government exaggerated the threat
 from Saddam, Blair said he was waiting to publish a 'complete
 picture' of both intelligence gained before the war and 'what we've
 actually found'.

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

------
Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently, misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the president's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

------
Worse Than Watergate? A Potential Huge Scandal If WMD Are Still Missing

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a president to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

Resolved, That the president is requested to transmit to the House of Representatives not later than four days after the date of the adoption of this resolution documents or other materials in the president's possession that provides specific evidence for the following claims relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction:

(1) On Aug. 26, 2002, the Vice President in a speech stated: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.... What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons."

(2) On Sept. 12, 2002, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the president stated: "Right now, Iraq is  expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."

(3) On Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, the president stated: "It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."

(4) On Jan. 7, 2003, the secretary of defense at a press briefing stated: "There is no doubt in my mind but that they currently    have chemical and biological weapons."

(5) On Jan. 9, 2003, in his daily press briefing, the White House spokesperson stated: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there Iraq."

(6) On March 16, 2003, in an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press, the vice president stated: "We believe he has, in fact,    reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong."

(7) On March 17, 2003, in an address to the nation, the President stated: "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."

(8) On March 21, 2003, in his daily press briefing the White House spokesperson stated: "Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly. All this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes."

(9) On March 24, 2003, in an appearance on CBS's Face the Nation, the secretary of defense stated: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established."

(10) On March 30, 2003, in an appearance on ABC's This Week, the secretary of defense stated: "We know where they are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

A few days ago, The Washington Post front-paged a story linking House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to $56,500 in campaign contributions made in 2002 from a Kansas-based energy company, Westar. One executive of Westar e-mailed his colleagues that "we have a plan for participation to get a seat at the table"   of  the House-Senate conference committee on the Bush administration’s energy plan. "The total of the package will be $31,500 in hard money (individual) and $25,000 in soft money (corporate)," and included "$11,500 in immediate needs for a group of candidates  associated with Tom DeLay, Billy Tauzin, Joe Barton and Sen. Richard Shelby."

Given that the Bush-backed bill was doling out more than $27 billion in targeted tax breaks to energy companies, this was not an unusual investment. Westar was seeking relief from regulatory oversight that would have allowed it to transfer $3 billion in debt off its balance sheets and, potentially, onto the monthly bills of consumers through rate hikes. The Westar exec’s e-mail went on to say that Rep. DeLay’s "agreement is necessary before the House Conferees can push the language we have in place in the House bill." And so 13 Westar officials paid $31,500 to the candidates they were told to support and the company gave $25,000 to Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, a committee closely tied to DeLay. Rep. Barton put the company’s exemption into the law, with Reps. DeLay, Tauzin and Barton all voting to  keep it there when Democrats tried to strip it out. Later it was withdrawn after a grand jury started investigating the company for securities  fraud.
 

The cover-up began to come apart last week, with the report on CBS News Wednesday night that Bush had received a CIA briefing on August 6, five weeks before the attack on the World Trade Center, which suggested that an airplane hijacking by terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden was an imminent possibility. This prompted an explosion of reporting and commentary in the media Thursday and Friday, and demands for a full-scale congressional inquiry from House and Senate Democratic leaders, as well as sections of the Republican Party.

Congressional critics took particular note of the coincidence of the August 6 briefing and two FBI reports, one from the Phoenix, Arizona office July 10, the other from Minneapolis August 13, which focused attention on suspicions that Al Qaeda operatives were using US flight schools to gain expertise required to hijack airplanes. The July 10 memo urged a nationwide screening of flight schools and cited possible links to Osama bin Laden. The Minneapolis FBI agents reported the detention of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the French-Moroccan immigrant who wanted to learn how to fly a Boeing 747, but not take off or land. One email from a Minneapolis FBI agent described Moussaoui as someone who might fly a jumbo jet into the World Trade Center. Both reports were ignored by FBI headquarters.

----
McCain said that he and Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, would push for legislation to create an independent bipartisan commission to investigate what the government knew and did in the period leading up to September 11. The Bush administration has vociferously opposed such an investigation, claiming that it would disrupt the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the next stage of the “war on terrorism.”

----
The extraordinary revelations about the FBI’s handling of the reports from Minnesota and Arizona do not permit an innocent explanation. The top level of the FBI vetoed appeals for action that even then would have seemed routine. Far more plausible than the strained attempts to explain this as a “failure to connect the dots,” is the likelihood that a decision had been made, at high levels within the American state, to allow an Al Qaeda hijacking to take place, in order to provide the occasion for unleashing the military onslaught that was already in advanced stages of planning.
------
The governments of at least four countries—Germany, Egypt, Russia and Israel—gave specific warnings to the US of an impending terrorist attack in the months preceding September 11. These alerts, while fragmentary, not only combined to foretell the scale of the attack and its main target, but indicated that hijacked commercial aircraft would be the weapon of choice.

According to an article in one of the major daily newspapers in Germany, published just after the destruction of the World Trade Center, the German intelligence service BND told both US and Israeli intelligence agencies in June that Middle East terrorists were “planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.”

The newspaper cited unnamed German intelligence sources, who said that the information came through Echelon, the US-controlled system of 120 satellites which monitors all worldwide electronic communications. Echelon is operated jointly by the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, although its existence is not officially admitted. (Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001)

The government of Egypt sent an urgent warning to the US June 13, based on a video made by Osama bin Laden. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told the French newspaper Le Figaro that the warning was originally delivered just before the G-8 summit in Genoa. It was taken seriously enough that antiaircraft batteries were stationed around Christopher Columbus Airport in the Italian city. According to Mubarak, bin Laden “spoke of assassinating President Bush and other heads of state in Genoa. It was a question of an airplane stuffed with explosives. These precautions then had been taken.” (Source: New York Times, September 26, 2001, “2 Leaders Tell of Plot to Kill Bush in Genoa,” by David Sanger)

According to Russian press reports, Russian intelligence notified the CIA during the summer that 25 terrorist pilots had been specifically
training for suicide missions. In an interview September 15 with MSNBC, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that he had ordered Russian intelligence in August to warn the US government “in the strongest possible terms” of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. (Source: From The Wilderness web site; MSNBC).

The London-based Sunday Telegraph —an arch-conservative newspaper usually highly supportive of the Bush administration—reported that the Israeli intelligence service Mossad had delivered a warning to the FBI and CIA in August that as many as 200 followers of Osama bin Laden were slipping into the country to prepare “a major assault on the United States.” The advisory spoke of a “large-scale target” in which Americans would be “very vulnerable.” The Los Angeles Times cited unnamed US officials confirming this Mossad warning had been received. (Source: Sunday Telegraph, September 16, 2001, “Israeli security issued urgent warning to CIA of large-scale terror attacks,” by David Wastell and Philip Jacobson; Los Angeles Times, September 20, 2001, “Officials Told of ‘Major Assault’ Plans,” by Richard A. Serrano and John-Thor Dahlburg)