If you never again read another word on the subject of "weapons of mass destruction," you need to read these articles, which explain why the WMD has finally hit the fan now, how the news finally broke, and what BushCo is doing to try to stem the tidal wave of evidence that administration hardliners cooked the intelligence, and duped Americans into supporting a "war" based on a lie.
First, make sure you're up to date on what all the fuss is about, and read Joseph Wilson's What I Didn't Find in Africa in full.
Now that you know why the fake Niger-uranium story is a very big deal indeed, brace yourself once more, and read on:
As though this were normal! I mean the repeated visits Vice President Dick Cheney made to the CIA before the war in Iraq. The visits were, in fact, unprecedented. During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit. ...
Cheney got into the operational side of intelligence as well. Reports in late 2001 that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger stirred such intense interest that his office let it be known he wanted them checked out. So, with the CIA as facilitator, a retired U.S. ambassador was dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate. He found nothing to substantiate the report and lots to call it into question. There the matter rested – until last summer, after the Bush administration made the decision for war in Iraq.
Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, claimed that Saddam Hussein had "resumed his effort to acquire nuclear weapons."
At the time, CIA analysts were involved in a knockdown, drag-out argument with the Pentagon on this very point. Most of the nuclear engineers at the CIA, and virtually all scientists at U.S. government laboratories and the International Atomic Energy Agency, found no reliable evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program.
But the vice president had spoken. ...
Ray McGovern
Not Business as Usual: Cheney and the CIA
AlterNet
June 30, 2003
There is no reason to doubt the veracity of McGovern's claim (and there is plenty of evidence to support that claim) that Dick Cheney was breathing down the CIA's neck throughout the latter half of 2001, and that Cheney knew exactly what the spooks were working on, and what their final conclusions would be.
McGovern is a former spook himself (or, as his bio states, "a CIA analyst from 1964 to 1990, [who] regularly reported to the vice president and senior policy-makers on the President's Daily Brief from 1981 to 1985"), and, as I mentioned yesterday, the spooks are finally coming out of the woodwork and talking.
Of course, the White House is denying that Cheney knew anything about the bogus uranium story before Bush latched onto the story as his main reason for waging war against Iraq. And the White House says Cheney never made all those visits to the CIA.
Which, if you ask me, is one of the most difficult claims of all to believe. You see, Cheney was assigned by Bush to ride herd over the entire WMD investigation, as of May, 2001.
The following excerpt comes straight from the U.S. Dept. of State (if you want to read the whole thing, you'll have to Google it; I don't post live links to .gov sites):
Text: Cheney to Oversee Domestic Counterterrorism Efforts
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
May 8, 2001
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction
Today, numerous Federal departments and agencies have programs to deal with the consequences of a potential use of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon in the United States. Many of these Federal programs offer training, planning, and assistance to state and local governments. But to maximize their effectiveness, these efforts need to be seamlessly integrated, harmonious, and comprehensive.
Therefore, I have asked Vice President Cheney to oversee the development of a coordinated national effort so that we may do the very best possible job of protecting our people from catastrophic harm. I have also asked Joe Allbaugh, the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to create an Office of National Preparedness. This office will be responsible for implementing the results of those parts of the national effort overseen by Vice President Cheney that deal with consequence management. Specifically it will coordinate all federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction consequence management within the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies. The Office of National Preparedness will work closely with state and local governments to ensure their planning, training, and equipment needs are addressed. FEMA will also work closely with the Department of Justice, in its lead role for crisis management, to ensure that all facets of our response to the threat from weapons of mass destruction are coordinated and cohesive. I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.
Now, you tell me Cheney didn't know the Niger-uranium story was bogus. Tell me he didn't know about any of the grave doubts the CIA had, about anything.
Finally, we come to Greg Thielmann, who was (until he retired in September of 2002) director of the Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs Office, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. State Department.
Google Thielmann. Google the news. Read the "Related Articles" below.
Then you decide: Did they or did they not "lie us into" a war?
Related articles:
Weapons of Mass Disappearance. As the U.S. prepared to go to war in Iraq last winter, the most compelling reason advanced by George W. Bush to justify a new kind of pre-emptive war was that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, chemical and biological arms — weapons of mass destruction (WMD). ... [M]istrust about the Iraqi intelligence was growing just as the Administration began to make a similar case against Iran. ... "Rumsfeld was deeply, almost pathologically distorting the intelligence," says [an Army intelligence] officer. ... Seasoned experts at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California disagreed, but their view — the most expert government interpretation available — was either ignored or overruled. "They made a decision to turn a blind eye to other explanations," says David Albright, a former International Atomic Energy Agency arms inspector... [Time, June 1, 2003]
Where are Iraq’s WMDs? Former Iraqi officials fleeing the regime told of underground bunkers and labs hiding vast stores of chemical and biological weapons and nuclear materials. The CIA, at first, was skeptical. Defectors in search of safe haven sometimes stretch or invent the facts. The true believers in the Bush administration, on the other hand, embraced the defectors and credited their stories. Many of the defectors were sent to the Americans by Ahmed Chalabi, the politically ambitious and controversial Iraqi exile. Chalabi’s chief patron is Richard Perle... The CIA [regarded Chalabi] as a con man. ... But rather than accept the CIA’s doubts, top officials in the Bush Defense Department set up their own team of intelligence analysts, a small but powerful shop now called the Office of Special Plans — and, half-jokingly, by its members, "the Cabal." The Cabal was eager to find a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, especially proof that Saddam played a role in the 9-11 attacks. The hard-liners at Defense seized on a report that Muhammad Atta, the chief hijacker, met in Prague in early April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence official. Only one problem with that story, the FBI pointed out. Atta was traveling at the time between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va. (The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts.) No matter. ... [Newsweek, June 9, 2003]
Truth and Consequences. On the evening of February 1, two dozen American officials gathered in a spacious conference room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va. The time had come to make the public case for war against Iraq. For six hours that Saturday, the men and women of the Bush administration argued about what Secretary of State Colin Powell should--and should not--say at the United Nations Security Council four days later. Not all the secret intelligence about Saddam Hussein's misdeeds, they found, stood up to close scrutiny. At one point during the rehearsal, Powell tossed several pages in the air. "I'm not reading this," he declared. "This is bulls- - -." ... [U.S. News and World Report, June 9, 2003]
NOW with Bill Moyers. The search isn't over and it is still possible, some experts think even likely, that chemical and biological weapons will yet be uncovered. But there's been a noticeable shift in the administration's rhetoric. There are a lot of qualifiers in their statements. It's not clear exactly what they are saying they will find. ... How then could the Administration have been so definite in the case it made for war? Questions are being raised by former intelligence analysts. Several recently wrote the President to express concern about "the intelligence cited by you and your chief advisors to justify the war against Iraq." Leaked documents are increasing the doubts. ... Now, in a rising chorus of questions, one voice stands out. It belongs to Greg Thielmann... [PBS, June 13, 2003]
Bush aides discredit analysts' doubts on trailers. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher insisted that the CIA had adequately considered all the questions raised by the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and that Secretary of State Colin Powell had been satisfied with the CIA response. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer disputed the bureau's questions, saying that it was not as well-qualified to judge the evidence as the CIA. ... At issue is a white paper compiled by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, released May 28... ''It's a little hard to understand how the president could be using this example in public speeches or public pronouncements to prove the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction when his own State Department doesn't buy that interpretation...'' [Boston Globe, June 27, 2003]
U.S. Gave Inaccurate Iraq Picture, Ex-Intel Official. "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq," said Greg Thielmann... CIA Director George Tenet also made "some inaccurate formulations" when he told Congress that Iraq "retains" a small number of SCUD missiles, Thielmann said. "This was not what the intelligence community said," Thielmann said. The intelligence community said Iraq "probably" had SCUDS because some could not be accounted for, he said. [Reuters, July 9, 2003]
White House Admits Uranium Claim Was Based On Faulty Intelligence. Michael Anton, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, told reporters yesterday that when Bush made his claim, the White House was not aware that the documents were fraudulent. He also said Bush's claim was based partly on intelligence of other Iraqi bids to buy uranium elsewhere in Africa, but that these details were not included in his January speech. ... A CIA official told the BBC today that [Joseph] Wilson's report was sent to the White House by March 2002, nearly a year before Bush's speech. The Bush administration says it gets hundreds of such reports every day. ... [Radio Free Europe, July 9, 2003]
Bush Skirts Question on 'Evidence' and Defends War. The administration's failure so far to find any substantial caches of chemical or biological weapons and the weakening of its case that Mr. Hussein was trying to rebuild his nuclear program have fed deep skepticism among many opponents of the war that Iraq was as much of a threat as Mr. Bush made it out to be. Those doubts were further reinforced today in Washington by a recently retired State Department official, who said the Iraqi threat was vastly overstated... [New York Times, July 10, 2003]
White House 'lied about Saddam threat'. This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides. ... At a press conference yesterday, Mr Thielmann said that, as of March 2003, when the US began military operations, "Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbours or to the United States". ... Mr Thielmann said a fierce debate inside the White House about the purpose of aluminium tubes bought by Baghdad had been "cloaked in ambiguity". While some CIA analysts thought they could be used for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, the best experts at the energy department disagreed. But the national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said publicly that they could only be used for centrifuges. Mr Thielmann also said there was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida. He added: "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude ... 'We know the answers - give us the intelligence to support those answers'." esponding to claims of deliberate distortions, Mr Bush accused his critics of "trying to rewrite history"... [The Guardian, July 10, 2003]
War based on new perception: Rumsfeld. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said the United States went to war against Iraq not because of fresh evidence of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington saw old evidence "in a dramatic new light" after September 11. The claim, in testimony to the US Senate, reflected a sharp change in tactics by an Administration under fire for knowingly basing its case against Saddam Hussein on flawed intelligence. ... The Bush Administration is playing down the importance of the President's January allegations, and those by Secretary of State Colin Powell in a presentation to the United Nations in February. Instead, the President and his aides suggested that the case against former Iraq president Saddam Hussein was built on continued defiance of the UN. ... [Rumsfeld's] remarks were controversial not only because they implied that fresh evidence of Saddam's activity did not play a role in going to war. The comments also implied that the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda was built more on changing perceptions of the danger of such an alliance, rather than on evidence that it actually existed, as the Administration had claimed. Mr Rumsfeld said he learned only "within recent days" that the Africa claims were based on faulty evidence. But on June 23 Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Parliament: "This has been widely in the public domain for a few weeks." ... [The Age, July 11, 2003]
Rumsfeld Reprise? The Missile Report That Foretold the Iraq Intelligence Controversy. Rumsfeld’s tendency to hype selective portions of intelligence that support his policy goals was already familiar to intelligence professionals. ... As with Iraq, Rumsfeld’s work on ballistic missiles often ignored the carefully considered views of such professionals in favor of highly unlikely worst-case scenarios that posited an imminent threat to the United States and prompted a military, rather than diplomatic, response. Just as is likely to be the case with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), time has proven Rumsfeld’s predictions dead wrong. ... [Greg Thielmann, Arms Control Today, Arms Control Association, July/August 2003]
Op/eds of interest:
Willingly in the dark. Mr. Powell asserted that invading troops would find four chemical munitions bunkers in Taji, a factory for making poisons and explosives in Khurmal and a center for testing biological and chemical weapons in Amiriyah. In his State of the Union speech, President Bush claimed Iraq had 500 tons of chemical weapons, 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin. None of this has been found, even though American troops have had free run of Iraq for a couple of months. It is alarming to think that our intelligence community is this incompetent. It is more alarming to think that, as CIA officials have alleged, high-ranking White House officials... manipulated the intelligence to frighten Americans into backing a war in Iraq the White House was spoiling for. ... Unfortunately, we cannot expect the Senate and House Intelligence committees, packed with Bush acolytes determined to avoid an investigation, to make a sincere effort to learn if our intelligence was bad, cynically manipulated or both. ... [Berkshire Eagle, June 24, 2003]
Of Mice and (Con) Men. The Department of Energy (DOE) scientists argued that the [aluminum] tubes were not directly suitable for enriching uranium and that, even if modified, were of poorer quality and reliability than tubes or rotors made of other metals that Iraq had experimented with in the late 1980s. Why would Iraq use a part that was so poorly designed it required modification, would dramatically slow down the enrichment process, and in the end might not even work? ... [Dennis Hans, Democratic Underground, July 7, 2003]
Posted 11:58:13 AM 
Send comment
![www.iraqbodycount.org](http://www.iraqbodycount.net/counters/ibc_b.gif"){kind=small}