Bring ’Em On!

Bring
’Em On!

The
Bush Administration’s Top 40 Lies About War and Terrorism
(links-annotated version)

by
Steve Perry

1) The administration
was not bent on war with Iraq from 9/11 onward.

Throughout the year
leading up to war, the White House publicly maintained that the U.S. took weapons
inspections seriously, that diplomacy would get its chance, that Saddam had
the opportunity to prevent a US invasion. The most pungent and concise evidence
to the contrary comes from the president’s own mouth. According to Time’s
March 31 road-to-war story, Bush popped in on national security adviser Condi
Rice one day in March 2002, interrupting a meeting on UN sanctions against Iraq.
Getting a whiff of the subject matter, W peremptorily waved his hand and told
her, "Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out." Clare Short, Tony Blair’s former secretary
for international development, recently lent further credence to the anecdote.
She told the London Guardian that Bush and Blair made a secret pact a few months
afterward, in the summer of 2002, to invade Iraq in either February or March
of this year.

Last fall CBS News
obtained meeting notes taken by a Rumsfeld aide at 2:40 on the afternoon of
September 11, 2001. The notes indicate that Rumsfeld wanted the "best info fast.
Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL
[Usama bin Laden].... Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Rumsfeld’s deputy
Paul Wolfowitz, the Bushmen’s leading intellectual light, has long been rabid
on the subject of Iraq. He reportedly told Vanity Fair writer Sam Tanenhaus
off the record that he believes Saddam was connected not only to bin Laden and
9/11, but the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The Bush administration’s
foreign policy plan was not based on September 11, or terrorism; those events
only brought to the forefront a radical plan for US control of the post-Cold
War world that had been taking shape since the closing days of the first Bush
presidency. Back then a small claque of planners, led by Wolfowitz, generated
a draft document known as Defense Planning Guidance, which envisioned a US that
took advantage of its lone-superpower status to consolidate American control
of the world both militarily and economically, to the point where no other nation
could ever reasonably hope to challenge the US Toward that end it envisioned
what we now call "preemptive" wars waged to reset the geopolitical table.

After a copy of DPG
was leaked to the New York Times, subsequent drafts were rendered a little less
frank, but the basic idea never changed. In 1997 Wolfowitz and his true believers—Richard
Perle, William Kristol, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld—formed an organization
called Project for the New American Century to carry their cause forward. And
though they all flocked around the Bush administration from the start, W never
really embraced their plan until the events of September 11 left him casting
around for a foreign policy plan.

Information Clearing
House [undated]: Bush
Planned Iraq ’Regime Change’ Before Becoming President

The Independent 4/23: Hans
Blix vs the US: ’I was undermined’

Center for Cooperative Research [undated]: The
Decision to ’Get Saddam’

Time Magazine [via Lisa Rein’s Radar] 3/30: First
Stop, Iraq

Bush Wars 4/7: Project
for the New American Century (PNAC)

2) The invasion of Iraq was based on a reasonable belief that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the US, a belief supported
by available intelligence evidence.

Paul Wolfowitz admitted to Vanity Fair that weapons of mass destruction
were not really the main reason for invading Iraq: "The decision to highlight
weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for going to war in Iraq
was taken for bureaucratic reasons.... [T]here were many other important factors
as well." Right. But they did not come under the heading of self-defense.

We now know how the Bushmen gathered their prewar intelligence: They set out
to patch together their case for invading Iraq and ignored everything that contradicted
it. In the end, this required that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. set aside the
findings of analysts from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon’s
own spy bureau) and stake their claim largely on the basis of isolated, anecdotal
testimony from handpicked Iraqi defectors. (See #5, Ahmed Chalabi.) But the
administration did not just listen to the defectors; it promoted their claims
in the press as a means of enlisting public opinion. The only reason so many
Americans thought there was a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda in the
first place was that the Bushmen trotted out Iraqi defectors making these sorts
of claims to every major media outlet that would listen.

Here is the verdict of Gregory Thielman, the recently retired head of the State
Department’s intelligence office: "I believe the Bush administration did not
provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed
by Iraq. This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude—we
know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers." Elsewhere
he has been quoted as saying, "The principal reasons that Americans did not
understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my view was the failure of senior
administration officials to speak honestly about what the intelligence showed."

Bush Wars 4/16:
Good
King George

Michael Leon, CounterPunch, 6/13: Missing
Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media

Sydney Morning Herald 6/16: A
mission in Iraq built on a lie

KCom Journal 6/14: A
distinct lack of intelligence

Bush Wars 5/12: Hersh:
Rummy’s Hijacked the US Intelligence Apparatus

Warren P. Strobel, Knight Ridder, 6/6: Data
didn’t back Bush claims on Iraqi weapons, officials say

Warren P. Strobel, Knight Ridder, 10/08/02: Some
in Bush administration have misgivings about Iraq policy

James Risen, New York Times, 6/18: Word
That US Doubted Iraq Would Use Deadly Gas

Associated Press 6/11: Senate
panel to investigate pre-war intelligence on Iraq

Mark Riley, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/16: Howard’s
Iraq evidence on parade in UK

Allister Sparks, The Star, 7/16: Bush
and Blair are starting to hurt

Veterans for Peace 2/27: Career
Diplomat Resigns over US Policy on Iraq

Simon Hoggart, Gulf News, 4/6: Blair’s
credibility crisis means a lonely US

Truth Out 2/27: John
Brady Kiesling’s letter of resignation

CBS News 7/9: War
Of Words Over WMD Heats Up

3) Saddam tried to buy uranium in Niger.

Lies and distortions tend to beget more lies and distortions, and here is W’s
most notorious case in point: Once the administration decided to issue a damage-controlling
(they hoped) mea culpa in the matter of African uranium, they were obliged
to couch it in another, more perilous lie: that the administration, and quite
likely Bush himself, thought the uranium claim was true when he made it. But
former acting ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York
Times on July 6 that exploded the claim. Wilson, who traveled to Niger in 2002
to investigate the uranium claims at the behest of the CIA and Dick Cheney’s
office and found them to be groundless, describes what followed this way: "Although
I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in
US government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the
ambassador’s report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by
the embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from
the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered
orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time
in government to know that this is standard operating procedure."

Richard Evans,
The Inquisitor, 6/10: Blair’s
WMD Claims Look Increasingly Shaky

Andrew Buncombe and Raymond Whitaker, The Independent, 6/29: Ministers
knew war papers were forged, says diplomat

David Sanger, New York Times, 7/8: Bush
Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says

Toronto Star 7/8: Iraq
evidence wrong, White House admits

John Troyer, CounterPunch, 7/15: The
Uranium Meltdown

Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue, 7/9: Conned
big time

Allister Sparks, The Star, 7/16: Bush
and Blair are starting to hurt

Bill Press, Nashville City Paper, 7/16: White
House confesses fabricating case for war

4) The aluminum tubes were proof of a nuclear program.

The very next sentence of Bush’s State of the Union address was just as egregious
a lie as the uranium claim, though a bit cagier in its formulation. "Our intelligence
sources tell us that [Saddam] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum
tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." This is altogether false in
its implication (that this is the likeliest use for these materials) and may
be untrue in its literal sense as well. As the London Independent summed it
up recently, "The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength
aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich
uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic
Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head
of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that
the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges." [emphasis added]

Warren P. Strobel
et al, Knight Ridder, 10/08/02: Some
in Bush administration have misgivings about Iraq policy

Rep. Henry Waxman’s House homepage, last updated 7/29: Nuclear
Evidence on Iraq

Marc Pritzke, CounterPunch, 6/23: An
Interview with Ray McGovern

5) Iraq’s WMDs were sent to Syria for hiding.

Or Iran, or.... "They shipped them out!" was a rallying cry for the administration
in the first few nervous weeks of finding no WMDs, but not a bit of supporting
evidence has emerged.

No links.

6) The CIA was primarily responsible for any prewar intelligence errors
or distortions regarding Iraq.

Don’t be misled by the news that CIA director George Tenet has taken the fall
for Bush’s falsehoods in the State of the Uranium address. As the journalist
Robert Dreyfuss wrote shortly before the war, "Even as it prepares for war against
Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the
Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to
bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with
Iraq. ... Morale inside the US national-security apparatus is said to be low,
with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for
war."

In short, Tenet fell on his sword when he vetted Bush’s State of the Union
yarns. And now he has had to get up and fall on it again.

Michael Isikoff
and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 6/23: Did
the CIA Shut Out Congress on WMD?

Rupert Cornwell, The Independent [via Common Dreams], 6/18: CIA
Deliberately Misled UN Arms Inspectors, Says Senator

Michael Isikoff and Tamara Lipper, Newsweek, 7/21: A
Spy Takes the Bullet

7) An International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that Iraq could
be as little as six months from making nuclear weapons.

Alas: The claim had to be retracted when the IAEA pointed out that no such
report existed.

Andrew Buncombe
and Raymond Whitaker, The Independent, 6/29: Ministers
knew war papers were forged, says diplomat

8) Saddam was involved with bin Laden and al Qaeda in the plotting of 9/11.

One of the most audacious and well-traveled of the Bushmen’s fibs, this one
hangs by two of the slenderest evidentiary threads imaginable: first, anecdotal
testimony by isolated, handpicked Iraqi defectors that there was an al Qaeda
training camp in Iraq, a claim CIA analysts did not corroborate and that postwar
US military inspectors conceded did not exist; and second, old intelligence
accounts of a 1991 meeting in Baghdad between a bin Laden emissary and officers
from Saddam’s intelligence service, which did not lead to any subsequent contact
that US or UK spies have ever managed to turn up. According to former State
Department intelligence chief Gregory Thielman, the consensus of US intelligence
agencies well in advance of the war was that "there was no significant pattern
of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation."

Bush Wars 4/28:
Still
no WMDs? No problem. Let’s resurrect al Qaeda.

Walter Pincus, The Washington Post [via Charleston Post and Courier], 6/22:
Iraq,
al-Qaida link unclear, report says

Nicolaas Van Rijn, Toronto Star, 7/13: Al
Qaeda claims exaggerated: analysts

9) The US wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.

Democracy is the last thing the US can afford in Iraq, as anyone who has paid
attention to the state of Arab popular sentiment already realizes. Representative
government in Iraq would mean the rapid expulsion of US interests. Rather, the
US wants westernized, secular leadership regimes that will stay in pocket and
work to neutralize the politically ambitious anti-Western religious sects popping
up everywhere. If a little brutality and graft are required to do the job, it
has never troubled the US in the past. Ironically, these standards describe
someone more or less like Saddam Hussein. Judging from the state of civil affairs
in Iraq now, the Bush administration will no doubt be looking for a strongman
again, if and when they are finally compelled to install anyone at all.

William Booth and
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, 6/28: Occupation
Forces Halt Elections Throughout Iraq

10) Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress are a homegrown Iraqi
political force, not a U.S.-sponsored front.

Chalabi is a more important bit player in the Iraq war than most people realize,
and not because he was the U.S.’s failed choice to lead a post-Saddam government.
It was Chalabi and his INC that funneled compliant defectors to the Bush administration,
where they attested to everything the Bushmen wanted to believe about Saddam
and Iraq (meaning, mainly, al Qaeda connections and WMD programs). The administration
proceeded to take their dubious word over that of the combined intelligence
of the CIA and DIA, which indicated that Saddam was not in the business of sponsoring
foreign terrorism and posed no imminent threat to anyone.

Naturally Chalabi is despised nowadays round the halls of Langley, but it wasn’t
always so. The CIA built the Iraqi National Congress and installed Chalabi at
the helm back in the days following Gulf War I, when the thought was to topple
Saddam by whipping up and sponsoring an internal opposition. It didn’t work;
from the start Iraqis have disliked and distrusted Chalabi. Moreover, his erratic
and duplicitous ways have alienated practically everyone in the US foreign policy
establishment as well—except for Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense, and therefore
the White House.

No links.

11) The United States is waging a war on terror.

Practically any school child could recite the terms of the Bush Doctrine, and
may have to before the Ashcroft Justice Department is finished: The global war
on terror is about confronting terrorist groups and the nations that harbor
them. The United States does not make deals with terrorists or with nations
where they find secure lodging.

Leave aside the blind eye that the US has always cast toward Israel’s actions
in the territories. How are the Bushmen doing elsewhere vis-à-vis their
announced principles? We can start with their fabrications and manipulations
of Iraqi WMD evidence—which, in the eyes of weapons inspectors, the UN Security
Council, American intelligence analysts, and the world at large, did not
pose any imminent threat.

The events of recent months have underscored more gaping violations of W’s
cardinal anti-terror rules. In April the Pentagon made a cooperation pact with
the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an anti-Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq.
Prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, American intelligence blamed it for the
death of several US nationals in Iran.

Most glaring of all is the Bush administration’s remarkable treatment of Saudi
Arabia. Consider: Eleven of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were Saudis.
The ruling House of Saud has longstanding and well-known ties to al Qaeda and
other terrorist outfits, which it funds (read protection money) to keep
them from making mischief at home. The May issue of Atlantic Monthly
had a nice piece on the House of Saud that recounts these connections.

Yet the Bush government has never said boo regarding the Saudis and international
terrorism. In fact, when terror bombers struck Riyadh in May, hitting compounds
that housed American workers as well, Colin Powell went out of his way to avoid
tarring the House of Saud: "Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone. It is
a threat to the civilized world. We will commit ourselves again to redouble
our efforts to work closely with our Saudi friends and friends all around the
world to go after al Qaeda." Later it was alleged that the Riyadh bombers purchased
some of their ordnance from the Saudi National Guard, but neither Powell nor
anyone else saw fit to revise their statements about "our Saudi friends."

Why do the Bushmen give a pass to the Saudi terror hotbed? Because the House
of Saud controls a lot of oil, and they are still (however tenuously) on our
side. And that, not terrorism, is what matters most in Bush’s foreign policy
calculus.

While the bomb craters in Riyadh were still smoking, W held a meeting with
Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Speaking publicly afterward, he
outlined a deal for US military aid to the Philippines in exchange for greater
"cooperation" in getting American hands round the throats of Filipino terrorists.
He mentioned in particular the US’s longtime nemesis Abu Sayyaf—and he also
singled out the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a small faction based on Mindanao,
the southernmost big island in the Philippine chain.

Of course it’s by purest coincidence that Mindanao is the location of Asia’s
richest oil reserves.

Haroon Siddiqui,
Toronto Star [via Truth Out], 5/4: Real
American Agenda Now Becoming Clear

Alejandro Lichauco, ABS-CBN, 4/30: Mindanao
is next target of US oil imperialism?

Bush Wars 5/15: Bunker-Buster
Nukes

Bush Wars [undated]: Overview...oil

12) The US has made progress against world terrorist elements, in particular
by crippling al Qaeda.

A resurgent al Qaeda has been making international news since around the time
of the Saudi Arabia bombings in May. The best coverage by far is that of Asia
Times correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad. According to Shahzad’s detailed accounts,
al Qaeda has reorganized itself along leaner, more diffuse lines, effectively
dissolving itself into a coalition of localized units that mean to strike frequently,
on a small scale, and in multiple locales around the world. Since claiming responsibility
for the May Riyadh bombings, alleged al Qaeda communiqués have also claimed
credit for some of the strikes at US troops in Iraq.

Michael Tomasky,
American Prospect, 6/18: Guess
who’s appeasing the Taliban now?

Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, 6/28: US
shooting in the dark in Afghanistan

Bush Wars 5/19: Play
It Again O-Sam-a

Bush Wars 5/20: New
al-Qaeda Blueprint: Smaller is Better

Bush Wars 5/28: What
if There’s No Such Thing as "al-Qaeda"?

13) The Bush administration has made Americans safer from terror on US soil.

Like the Pentagon "plan" for occupying postwar Iraq, the Department of Homeland
Security is mainly a Bush administration PR dirigible untethered to anything
of substance. It’s a scandal waiting to happen, and the only good news for W
is that it’s near the back of a fairly long line of scandals waiting to happen.

On May 26 the trade magazine Federal Computer Week published a report
on DHS’s first 100 days. At that point the nerve center of Bush’s domestic war
on terror had only recently gotten e-mail service. As for the larger matter
of creating a functioning organizational grid and, more important, a software
architecture plan for integrating the enormous mass of data that DHS is supposed
to process—nada. In the nearly two years since the administration announced
its intention to create a cabinet-level homeland security office, nothing meaningful
has been accomplished. And there are no funds to implement a network plan if
they had one. According to the magazine, "Robert David Steele, an author and
former intelligence officer, points out that there are at least 30 separate
intelligence systems [theoretically feeding into DHS] and no money to connect
them to one another or make them interoperable. ’There is nothing in the president’s
homeland security program that makes America safer,’ he said."

Dan Higgins, Ithaca
Journal, 6/20: FBI
on the lookout for David Nelson, any David Nelson

Chris Harris, Hartford Advocate, 6/26: You
can’t talk back to the Office of Homeland Security

Frank James, Seattle Times, 6/30: Homeland
security underfunded, unprepared

Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service News Agency [undated]: Post-9/11
Immigrant Roundup Backfired

14) The Bush administration has nothing to hide concerning the events of
September 11, 2001, or the intelligence evidence collected prior to that day.

First Dick Cheney personally intervened to scuttle a broad congressional investigation
of the day’s events and their origins. And for the past several months the administration
has fought a quiet rear-guard action culminating in last week’s delayed release
of Congress’s more modest 9/11 report. The White House even went so far as to
classify after the fact materials that had already been presented in public
hearing.

What were they trying to keep under wraps? The Saudi connection, mostly, and
though 27 pages of the details have been excised from the public report, there
is still plenty of evidence lurking in its extensively massaged text. (When
you see the phrase "foreign nation" substituted in brackets, it’s nearly always
Saudi Arabia.) The report documents repeated signs that there was a major attack
in the works with extensive help from Saudi nationals and apparently also at
least one member of the government. It also suggests that is one reason intel
operatives didn’t chase the story harder: Saudi Arabia was by policy fiat a
"friendly" nation and therefore no threat. The report does not explore the administration’s
response to the intelligence briefings it got; its purview is strictly the performance
of intelligence agencies. All other questions now fall to the independent 9/11
commission, whose work is presently being slowed by the White House’s foot-dragging
in turning over evidence.

Bush Wars 5/9:
Has Graham
Got 9/11 Goods on Bush?

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 4/30: The
Secrets of September 11

Bush Wars 5/12: The
Bush 9/11 Timeline

Paul Thompson, Center for Cooperative Research [undated]: September
11: Minute by Minute

Michael Isikoff and Tamara Lipper, Newsweek [via Truth Out], 10/21/02: Cheney:
’Investigators, Keep Out’

Fox News Sunday transcript 5/4: Senator
Bob Graham interview

Carl Limbacher, NewsMax.com, 5/7: Prez
Wannabe Graham Eyeing Evidence That Bush Blew 9/11

Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, 7/28: The
9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI

15) US air defenses functioned according to protocols on September 11, 2001.

Old questions abound here. The central mystery—how US air defenses could have
responded so poorly on that day—is fairly easy to grasp. A cursory look at
that morning’s timeline of events is enough.

8:13 Flight 11 disobeys air traffic instructions and turns off its
transponder.

8:40 NORAD command center claims first notification of likely Flight
11 hijacking.

8:42 Flight 175 veers off course and shuts down its transponder.

8:43 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 175 hijacking.

8:46 Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center north tower.

8:46 Flight 77 goes off course.

9:03 Flight 175 hits the WTC south tower.

9:16 Flight 93 goes off course.

9:16 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 93 hijacking.

9:24 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 77 hijacking.

9:37 Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.

10:06 Flight 93 crashes in a Pennsylvania field.

The open secret underlying 9/11 is that stateside US air defenses
had been reduced to paltry levels since the end of the Cold War. According to
a report by Paul Thompson published at the endlessly informative Center for
Cooperative Research website (www.cooperativeresearch.org),
"[O]nly two air force bases in the Northeast region... were formally part of
NORAD’s defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard Base, on Massachusetts’s
Cape Cod peninsula and about 188 miles east of New York City. The other was
Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk, Virginia, and about 129 miles south of
Washington. During the Cold War, the US had literally thousands of fighters
on alert. But as the Cold War wound down, this number was reduced until it reached
only 14 fighters in the continental US by 9/11."

But even an underpowered air defense system on slow-response status (15 minutes,
officially, on 9/11) does not explain the magnitude of NORAD’s apparent failures
that day. Start with the discrepancy in the times at which NORAD commanders
claim to have learned of the various hijackings. By 8:43 a.m., NORAD had been
notified of two probable hijackings in the previous five minutes. If there was
such a thing as a system-wide air defense crisis plan, it should have kicked
in at that moment. Three minutes later, at 8:46, Flight 11 crashed into the
first WTC tower. By then alerts should have been going out to all regional air
traffic centers of apparent coordinated hijackings in progress. Yet when Flight
77, which eventually crashed into the Pentagon, was hijacked three minutes later,
at 8:46, NORAD claims not to have learned of it until 9:24, 38 minutes after
the fact and just 13 minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon.

The professed lag in reacting to the hijacking of Flight 93 is just as striking.
NORAD acknowledged learning of the hijacking at 9:16, yet the Pentagon’s position
is that it had not yet intercepted the plane when it crashed in a Pennsylvania
field just minutes away from Washington, D.C. at 10:06, a full 50 minutes later.

In fact, there are a couple of other circumstantial details of the crash, discussed
mostly in Pennsylvania newspapers and barely noted in national wire stories,
that suggest Flight 93 may have been shot down after all. First, officials never
disputed reports that there was a secondary debris field six miles from the
main crash site, and a few press accounts said that it included one of the plane’s
engines. A secondary debris field points to an explosion on board, from one
of two probable causes—a terrorist bomb carried on board or an Air Force missile.
And no investigation has ever intimated that any of the four terror crews were
toting explosives. They kept to simple tools like the box cutters, for ease
in passing security. Second, a handful of eyewitnesses in the rural area around
the crash site did report seeing low-flying US military jets around the time
of the crash.

Which only raises another question. Shooting down Flight 93 would have been
incontestably the right thing to do under the circumstances. More than that,
it would have constituted the only evidence of anything NORAD and the Pentagon
had done right that whole morning. So why deny it? Conversely, if fighter jets
really were not on the scene when 93 crashed, why weren’t they? How could that
possibly be?

Richard Wallace,
UK Mirror [undated]: What
Did Happen to Flight 93?

Jeff Pillets, The
Record, 9/14/01: In
rural hamlet, the mystery mounts; 5 report second plane at Pa. crash site;
the investigation

William Bunch,
Philadelphia Daily News, 9/16:02: Three-minute
discrepancy in tape

Tom Gribb et al,
Post-Gazette, 9/13/01: Investigators
locate ’black box’ from Flight 93; widen search area in Somerset crash

Richard Gazarik
and Robin Acton, Tribune-Review [via Flight93crash.com], 9/14/01: Authorities
deny Flight 93 was shot down by F-16

Albert McKeon,
Nashua-Telegraph, 9/13/01: FAA
worker says hijacked jetliners almost collided before striking World Trade
Center

16) The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential services
and rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure after the shooting war ended.

The question of what the US would do to rebuild Iraq was raised before the
shooting started. I remember reading a press briefing in which a Pentagon official
boasted that at the time, the American reconstruction team had already spent
three weeks planning the postwar world! The Pentagon’s first word was
that the essentials of rebuilding the country would take about $10 billion and
three months; this stood in fairly stark contrast to UN estimates that an aggressive
rebuilding program could cost up to $100 billion a year for a minimum of three
years.

After the shooting stopped it was evident the US had no plan for keeping order
in the streets, much less commencing to rebuild. (They are upgrading certain
oil facilities, but that’s another matter.) There are two ways to read this.
The popular version is that it proves what bumblers Bush and his crew really
are. And it’s certainly true that where the details of their grand designs are
concerned, the administration tends to have postures rather than plans. But
this ignores the strategic advantages the US stands to reap by leaving Iraqi
domestic affairs in a chronic state of (managed, they hope) chaos. Most important,
it provides an excuse for the continued presence of a large US force, which
ensures that America will call the shots in putting Iraqi oil back on the world
market and seeing to it that the Iraqis don’t fall in with the wrong sort of
oil company partners. A long military occupation is also a practical means of
accomplishing something the US cannot do officially, which is to maintain air
bases in Iraq indefinitely. (This became necessary after the US agreed to vacate
its bases in Saudi Arabia earlier this year to try to defuse anti-U.S. political
tensions there.)

Meanwhile, the US plans to pay for whatever rebuilding it gets around to doing
with the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales, an enormous cash box the US will oversee
for the good of the Iraqi people.

In other words, "no plan" may have been the plan the Bushmen were intent on
pursuing all along.

Susan B. Glasser
and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, 4/2: Reconstruction
Planners Worry, Wait and Reevaluate

Bush Wars 4/2:
Reconstruction
Blues

Bush Wars 5/16:
Chaos
in Iraq

Bush Wars 5/21:
Chaos
in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?

PBS Newshour transcript,
3/25: The
Cost of War

Bill Walsh, Anniston
Star [via Google cache], 3/23: Rebuilding
Iraq: Bush’s plan to rebuild postwar Iraq draws fire from Congress

Abid Ali, CNN,
3/31: Allies
row over rebuilding Iraq

Ehsan Ahrari, Asia
Times [via Google cache], 3/26: The
lucrative business of rebuilding Iraq

Mike Allen, Washington
Post [via The Iraq Foundation], 2/26: US
Increases Estimated Cost Of War in Iraq

17) The US has made a good-faith effort at peacekeeping in Iraq during the
postwar period.

"Some [looters] shot big grins at American soldiers and Marines or put down
their prizes to offer a thumbs-up or a quick finger across the throat and a
whispered word—Saddam—before grabbing their loot and vanishing."

—Robert Fisk, London Independent, 4/11/03

Despite the many clashes between US troops and Iraqis in the three months since
the heavy artillery fell silent, the postwar performance of US forces has been
more remarkable for the things they have not done—their failure to intervene
in civil chaos or to begin reestablishing basic civil procedures. It isn’t the
soldiers’ fault. Traditionally an occupation force is headed up by military
police units schooled to interact with the natives and oversee the restoration
of goods and services. But Rumsfeld has repeatedly declined advice to rotate
out the combat troops sooner rather than later and replace some of them with
an MP force. Lately this has been a source of escalating criticism within military
ranks.

Bush Wars 4/16:
"I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"

Bush Wars 4/11:
Baghdad
is Chaos

Jonathan S. Landay
and Warren P. Strobel, Knight Ridder, 7/1: Bremer
requests more troops as violence, tension escalate

Anthony Shadid,
Washington Post, 7/1: Mistrust
Mixes With Misery In Heat of Baghdad Police Post

Robert Schlesinger,
Boston Globe, 7/10: Rumsfeld
is pressed on troops’ return

18) Despite vocal international opposition, the US was backed by most of
the world, as evidenced by the 40-plus-member Coalition of the Willing.

When the whole world opposed the US invasion of Iraq, the outcry was so loud
that it briefly pierced the slumber of the American public, which poured out
its angst in poll numbers that bespoke little taste for a war without the UN’s
blessing. So it became necessary to assure the folks at home that the whole
world was in fact for the invasion. Thus was born the Coalition of the
Willing, consisting of the US and UK, with Australia caddying—and 40-some additional
co-champions of U.S.-style democracy in the Middle East, whose ranks included
such titans of diplomacy and pillars of representative government as Angola,
Azerbaijan, Colombia, Eritrea, and Micronesia. If the American public noticed
the ruse, all was nonetheless forgotten when Baghdad fell. Everybody loves a
winner.

LiveJournal 3/31:
Who
is in the Coalition of the Willing?

19) This war was notable for its protection of civilians.

This from the Herald of Scotland, May 23: "American guns, bombs, and missiles
killed more civilians in the recent war in Iraq than in any conflict since Vietnam,
according to preliminary assessments carried out by the UN, international aid
agencies, and independent study groups. Despite US boasts this was the fastest,
most clinical campaign in military history, a first snapshot of ’collateral
damage’ indicates that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi non-combatants died in
the course of the hi-tech blitzkrieg."

The Herald (Scotland)
[via Refuse and Resist] 5/23: Civilian
Deaths in Iraq could be as high as 10,000

Associated Press
[via The Globe and Mail] 4/1:
’Precise’ bombs going astray

20) The looting of archaeological and historic sites in Baghdad was unanticipated.

General Jay Garner himself, then the head man for postwar Iraq, told the Washington
Times that he had put the Iraqi National Museum second on a list of sites requiring
protection after the fall of the Saddam government, and he had no idea why the
recommendation was ignored. It’s also a matter of record that the administration
had met in January with a group of US scholars concerned with the preservation
of Iraq’s fabulous Sumerian antiquities. So the war planners were aware of the
riches at stake. According to Scotland’s Sunday Herald, the Pentagon took at
least one other meeting as well: "[A] coalition of antiquities collectors and
arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP),
met with US Defense and State department officials prior to the start of military
action to offer its assistance.... The group is known to consist of a number
of influential dealers who favor a relaxation of Iraq’s tight restrictions on
the ownership and export of antiquities.... [Archaeological Institute of America]
president Patty Gerstenblith said: ’The ACCP’s agenda is to encourage the collecting
of antiquities through weakening the laws of archaeologically rich nations and
eliminate national ownership of antiquities to allow for easier export.’"

Liam McDougall,
Sunday Herald, 4/6: US accused of plans to loot Iraqi antiques

Bush Wars 4/23:
General
Jay and the Museum

Bryan Pfaffenberger,
Pfaffen Blog, 4/15: US
failure to prevent looting...

21) Saddam was planning to provide WMD to terrorist groups.

This is very concisely debunked in Walter Pincus’s July 21 Washington Post
story, so I’ll quote him: "’Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a
biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,’
President Bush said in Cincinnati on October 7.... But declassified portions
of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the
White House show that at the time of the president’s speech the US intelligence
community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE, which began
circulating October 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried
that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death
or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the
United States."

Walter Pincus,
Washington Post [via SFGate], 7/21: Iraq
link to terror judged not likely before Bush speech

22) Saddam was capable of launching a chemical or biological attack in 45
minutes.

Again the WashPost wraps it up nicely: "The 45-minute claim is at the center
of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British
weapons scientist who had questioned the government’s use of the allegation.
The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament
as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to
Britain’s public ’dossier’ on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide
to Prime Minister Tony Blair—and against the wishes of British intelligence,
which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable."

Dana Milbank, Washington
Post, 7/20: White
House Didn’t Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes

John Dean, FindLaw,
7/18: Why
A Special Prosecutor’s Investigation Is Needed To Sort Out the Niger Uranium
And Related WMDs Mess

23) The Bush administration is seeking to create a viable Palestinian state.

The interests of the US toward the Palestinians have not changed—not yet,
at least. Israel’s "security needs" are still the US’s sturdiest pretext for
its military role in policing the Middle East and arming its Israeli proxies.
But the US’s immediate needs have tilted since the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq. Now the Bushmen need a fig leaf—to confuse, if not exactly cover,
their designs, and to give shaky pro-U.S. governments in the region some scrap
to hold out to their own restive peoples. Bush’s roadmap has scared the hell
out of the Israeli right, but they have little reason to worry. Press reports
in the US and Israel have repeatedly telegraphed the assurance that Bush won’t
try to push Ariel Sharon any further than he’s comfortable going.

Bush Wars 4/14:
Sharon:
New Melody, Same Lyrics

Bush Wars 4/4:
Ha’aretz:
The "Israelization" of America

Bush Wars 4/11:
Ha’aretz:
What Road Map?

Bush Wars 5/2:
There
Are No Bridges on Bush’s Road Map

Alexander Cockburn,
CounterPunch [via Working for Change], 5/28: The
road map hoax

24) People detained by the US after 9/11 were legitimate terror suspects.

Quite the contrary, as disclosed officially in last month’s critical report
on US detainees from the Justice Department’s own Office of Inspector General.
A summary analysis of post-9/11 detentions posted at the UC-Davis website states,
"None of the 1,200 foreigners arrested and detained in secret after September
11 was charged with an act of terrorism. Instead, after periods of detention
that ranged from weeks to months, most were deported for violating immigration
laws. The government said that 752 of 1,200 foreigners arrested after September
11 were in custody in May 2002, but only 81 were still in custody in September
2002."

Bush Wars 4/24:
Guantanamo:
A Great Place for Kids, Too

Dale Russakoff,
Washington Post, N.J.
Judge Unseals Transcript in Controversial Terror Case

25) The US is obeying the Geneva conventions in its treatment of terror-related
suspects, prisoners, and detainees.

The entire mumbo-jumbo about "unlawful combatants" was conceived to skirt the
Geneva conventions on treatment of prisoners by making them out to be something
other than POWs. Here is the actual wording of Donald Rumsfeld’s pledge, freighted
with enough qualifiers to make it absolutely meaningless: "We have indicated
that we do plan to, for the most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably
consistent with the Geneva conventions to the extent they are appropriate."
Meanwhile the administration has treated its prisoners—many of whom, as we
are now seeing confirmed in legal hearings, have no plausible connection to
terrorist enterprises—in a manner that blatantly violates several key Geneva
provisions regarding humane treatment and housing.

No links.

26) Shots rang out from the Palestine hotel, directed at US soldiers, just
before a US tank fired on the hotel, killing two journalists.

Eyewitnesses to the April 8 attack uniformly denied any gunfire from the hotel.
And just two hours prior to firing on the hotel, US forces had bombed the Baghdad
offices of Al-Jazeera, killing a Jordanian reporter. Taken together, and considering
the timing, they were deemed a warning to unembedded journalists covering the
fall of Baghdad around them. The day’s events seem to have been an extreme instance
of a more surreptitious pattern of hostility demonstrated by US and UK forces
toward foreign journalists and those non-attached Western reporters who moved
around the country at will. (One of them, Terry Lloyd of Britain’s ITN, was
shot to death by UK troops at a checkpoint in late March under circumstances
the British government has refused to disclose.)

Some days after firing on the Palestine Hotel, the US sent in a commando unit
to raid select floors of the hotel that were known to be occupied by journalists,
and the news gatherers were held on the floor at gunpoint while their rooms
were searched. A Centcom spokesman later explained cryptically that intelligence
reports suggested there were people "not friendly to the US" staying at the
hotel. Allied forces also bombed the headquarters of Abu Dhabi TV, injuring
several.

Robert Fisk, CounterPunch,
4/29: Did
the US Murder Journalists?

Joel Campagna and
Rhonda Roumani, CPJ Press Online, 4/27: Permission
to Fire

27) US troops "rescued" Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.

If I had wanted to run up the tally of administration lies, the Lynch episode
alone could be parsed into several more. Officials claimed that Lynch and her
comrades were taken after a firefight in which Lynch battled back bravely. Later
they announced with great fanfare that US Special Forces had rescued Lynch from
her captors. They reported that she had been shot and stabbed. Later yet, they
reported that the recuperating Lynch had no memory of the events.

Bit by bit it all proved false. Lynch’s injuries occurred when the vehicle
she was riding in crashed. She did not fire on anybody and she was not shot
or stabbed. The Iraqi soldiers who had been holding her had abandoned the hospital
where she was staying the night before US troops came to get her—a development
her "rescuers" were aware of. In fact her doctor had tried to return her to
the Americans the previous evening after the Iraqi soldiers left. But he was
forced to turn back when US troops fired on the approaching ambulance. As for
Lynch’s amnesia, her family has told reporters her memory is perfectly fine.

Bush Wars 4/16:
Saving
Private Lynch

Rowan Scarborough,
Washington Times, 4/9: Crash
caused Lynch’s ’horrific injuries’

28) The populace of Baghdad and of Iraq generally turned out en masse to
greet US troops as liberators.

There were indeed scattered expressions of thanks when US divisions rolled
in, but they were neither as extensive nor as enthusiastic as Bush image-makers
pretended. Within a day or two of the Saddam government’s fall, the scene in
the Baghdad streets turned to wholesale ransacking and vandalism. Within the
week, large-scale protests of the US occupation had already begun occurring
in every major Iraqi city.

Bush Wars 4/10:
So
This Is Liberation

Bush Wars 4/18:
Baghdad:
"Tens of Thousands" Take to Streets

Bush Wars 4/17:
Fisk:
One War of Liberation Down, One to Go

Bush Wars 4/14:
Misery
and Mounting Ethnic Hostility

Bush Wars 4/12:
Baghdad
Riots Take a Huge Toll

29) A spontaneous crowd of cheering Iraqis showed up in a Baghdad square
to celebrate the toppling of Saddam’s statue.

A long-distance shot of the same scene that was widely posted on the internet
shows that the teeming mob consisted of only one or two hundred souls, contrary
to the impression given by all the close-up TV news shots of what appeared to
be a massive gathering. It was later reported that members of Ahmed Chalabi’s
local entourage made up most of the throng.

Bush Wars 4/10:
What
cheering crowd in Baghdad?

Antiwar.com 4/12:
Just Another
Staged Baghdad Rally?

30) No major figure in the Bush administration said that the Iraqi populace
would turn out en masse to welcome the US military as liberators.

When confronted with—oh, call them reality deficits—one habit of the Bushmen
is to deny that they made erroneous or misleading statements to begin with,
secure in the knowledge that the media will rarely muster the energy to look
it up and call them on it. They did it when their bold prewar WMD predictions
failed to pan out (We never said it would be easy! No, they only implied
it), and they did it when the "jubilant Iraqis" who took to the streets after
the fall of Saddam turned out to be anything but (We never promised they
would welcome us with open arms!).

But they did. March 16, Dick Cheney, Meet the Press: The Iraqis are
desperate "to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators
the United States when we come to do that.... [T]he vast majority of them would
turn on [Saddam] in a minute if, in fact, they thought they could do so safely").

Meet the Press,
3/16/03, pg. 6

31) The US achieved its stated objectives in Afghanistan, and vanquished
the Taliban.

According to accounts in the Asia Times of Hong Kong, the US held a secret
meeting earlier this year with Taliban leaders and Pakistani intelligence officials
to offer a deal to the Taliban for inclusion in the Afghan government. (Main
condition: Dump Mullah Omar.) As Michael Tomasky commented in The American
Prospect, "The first thing you may be wondering: Why is there a possible
role for the Taliban in a future government? Isn’t that fellow Hamid Karzai
running things, and isn’t it all going basically okay? As it turns out, not
really and not at all.... The reality... is an escalating guerilla war in which
’small hit-and-run attacks are a daily feature in most parts of the country,
while face-to-face skirmishes are common in the former Taliban stronghold around
Kandahar in the south.’"

No links.

32) Careful science demonstrates that depleted uranium is no big risk to
the population.

Pure nonsense. While the government has trotted out expert after expert to
debunk the dangers of depleted uranium, DU has been implicated in health troubles
experienced both by Iraqis and by US and allied soldiers in the first Gulf War.
Unexploded DU shells are not a grave danger, but detonated ones release particles
that eventually find their way into air, soil, water, and food.

While we’re on the subject, the BBC reported a couple of months ago that recent
tests of Afghani civilians have turned up with unusually high concentrations
of non-depleted uranium isotopes in their urine. International monitors have
called it almost conclusive evidence that the US used a new kind of uranium-laced
bomb in the Afghan war.

Scott Peterson,
The Christian Science Monitor, 4/15: Remains
of toxic bullets litter Iraq

Col. James Naughton,
Defense Link (DOD), 3/14: Briefing
on Depleted Uranium

Dan Fahey, .pdf
file [via Current Issues], 3/12: Facts,
Myths and Propaganda Over Depleted Uranium Weapons

Bush Wars 5/5:
Get
Your Dirty Bombs Here

Alex Kirby, BBC
News, 5/22: Afghans’
uranium levels spark alert

Uranium Medical
Research Center [undated]: UMRC’s
preliminary findings from Afghanistan & Operation Enduring Freedom

33) The looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities presented no big risk to the
population.

Commanders on the scene, and Rumsfeld back in Washington, immediately assured
everyone that the looting of a facility where raw uranium powder (so-called
"yellowcake") and several other radioactive isotopes were stored was no serious
danger to the populace—yet the looting of the facility came to light in part
because, as the Washington Times noted, "US and British newspaper reports have
suggested that residents of the area were suffering from severe ill health after
tipping out yellowcake powder from barrels and using them to store food."

No links.

34) US troops were under attack when they fired upon a crowd of civilian
protesters in Mosul.

April 15: US troops fire into a crowd of protesters when it grows angry at
the pro-Western speech being given by the town’s new mayor, Mashaan al-Juburi.
Seven are killed and dozens injured. Eyewitness accounts say the soldiers spirit
Juburi away as he is pelted with objects by the crowd, then take sniper positions
and begin firing on the crowd.

Bush Wars 3/4:
What
Happened in Mosul?

Bush Wars 4/15:
More
Lessons in Democracy

35) US troops were under attack when they fired upon two separate crowds
of civilian protesters in Fallujah.

April 28: American troops fire into a crowd of demonstrators gathered on Saddam’s
birthday, killing 13 and injuring 75. US commanders claim the troops had come
under fire, but eyewitnesses contradict the account, saying the troops started
shooting after they were spooked by warning shots fired over the crowd by one
of the Americans’ own Humvees. Two days later US soldiers fired on another crowd
in Fallujah, killing three more.

London Times, 4/29:
US
troops ’kill 13’ after shooting at Iraqi crowd

Bush Wars 5/1:
Unfriendly
Fire

Bush Wars 5/2:
Fallujah:
Fever Pitch

36) The Iraqis fighting occupation forces consist almost entirely of "Saddam
supporters"or "Ba’ath remnants."

This has been the subject of considerable spin on the Bushmen’s part in the
past month, since they launched Operation Sidewinder to capture or kill remaining
opponents of the US occupation. It’s true that the most fierce (but by no means
all) of the recent guerrilla opposition has been concentrated in the Sunni-dominated
areas that were Saddam’s stronghold, and there is no question that Saddam partisans
are numerous there. But, perhaps for that reason, many other guerrilla fighters
have flocked there to wage jihad, both from within and without Iraq.
Around the time of the US invasion, some 10,000 or so foreign fighters had crossed
into Iraq, and I’ve seen no informed estimate of how many more may have joined
them since.

Online note: There may be a reason for the apparent bloodlust
of former Republican Guard officials around Baghdad that is not rooted
in any loyalty to Saddam—quite the opposite, in fact. Though the subject
was never broached in US or UK media to my knowledge, the Middle Eastern English-language
press carried several reports in late April pointing to an alleged deal between
the Pentagon and senior officials in Saddam’s Republican Guard for the fall
of Baghdad. According to this line, senior Ba’athists sold out Saddam and
folded up their tents in exchange for a promise that these officials would
receive both money and roles in the post-Saddam government—a pledge that, if
it was indeed made, was later broken when the US occupation command announced
that former Ba’ath functionaries would be barred from the government after all.
A double-cross such as this could easily account for the ferocity of their
role in the guerrilla resistance. 

But is the story of a deal credible? On its face, yes. Two things to remember:
Rumsfeld himself said at a briefing early in the war that the Pentagon
was in touch with senior Republican Guard officers. And numerous reporters in
Baghdad commented at the time of the fall that it was as if the entire
government just failed to show up for work one day.

That is exactly what happened, as later news accounts demonstrated: One day
the Saddam regime was going through its motions, and the next it was gone. Governments
that spontaneously crumble don’t operate that way; by all appearances the collapse
was dictated from somewhere near the top of the Iraqi government food chain. [You
can find more details and numerous links about the alleged deal in these
Bush Wars posts: 4/15;
4/21; 4/25.]

Mark
Phillips, CBS News, 6/12: US
Mounts Major Iraq Offensive

Jason Burke, The
Observer, 6/29: Why
were six Britons left to die in an Iraqi marketplace?

Neil MacFarquhar,
New York Times, 7/20: Iraqi
Shiites Protest in Formerly Calm Najaf

37) The bidding process for Iraq rebuilding contracts displayed no favoritism
toward Bush and Cheney’s oil/gas cronies.

Most notoriously, Dick Cheney’s former energy-sector employer, Halliburton,
was all over the press dispatches about the first round of rebuilding contracts.
So much so that they were eventually obliged to bow out of the running for a
$1 billion reconstruction contract for the sake of their own PR profile. But
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root still received the first major plum
in the form of a $7 billion contract to tend to oil field fires and (the real
purpose) to do any retooling necessary to get the oil pumping at a decent rate,
a deal that allows them a cool $500 million in profit. The fact that Dick Cheney’s
office is still fighting tooth and nail to block any disclosure of the individuals
and companies with whom his energy task force consulted tells everything you
need to know.

Bush Wars 4/11:
Halliburton:
$7 Billion for Starters

Bush Wars 5/12:
Woolsey:
Another Bushman With His Hand in the Till

Dan Ackman, Forbes,
7/9: Cheney
Task Force Loses Place To Hide

Bloomberg, 6/17:
Iraqi
Oil Production Slowed by US Push to Oust Saddam’s Men

38) "We found the WMDs!"

There have been at least half a dozen junctures at which the Bushmen have breathlessly
informed the press that allied troops had found the WMD smoking gun, including
the president himself, who on June 1 told reporters, "For those who say we haven’t
found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we
found them."

Shouldn’t these quickly falsified statements be counted as errors rather than
lies? Under the circumstances, no. First, there is just too voluminous a record
of the administration going on the media offensive to tout lines they know to
be flimsy. This appears to be more of same. Second, if the great genius Karl
Rove and the rest of the Bushmen have demonstrated that they understand anything
about the propaganda potential of the historical moment they’ve inherited, they
surely understand that repetition is everything. Get your message out regularly,
and even if it’s false a good many people will believe it.

Finally, we don’t have to speculate about whether the administration would
really plant bogus WMD evidence in the American media, because they have already
done it, most visibly in the case of Judith Miller of the New York Times and
the Iraqi defector "scientist" she wrote about at the military’s behest on April
21. Miller did not even get to speak with the purported scientist, but she graciously
passed on several things American commanders claimed he said: that Iraq only
destroyed its chemical weapons days before the war, that WMD materiel had been
shipped to Syria, and that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. As Slate media
critic Jack Shafer told WNYC Radio’s On the Media program, "When you...
look at [her story], you find that it’s gas, it’s air. There’s no way to judge
the value of her information, because it comes from an unnamed source that won’t
let her verify any aspect of it. And if you dig into the story... you’ll find
out that the only thing that Miller has independently observed is a man that
the military says is the scientist, wearing a baseball cap, pointing at mounds
in the dirt."

Philip Gourevitch,
The New Yorker, 6/16: Might
and Right

Peter Beaumont
et al, The Observer, 6/15: Iraqi
mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare

Jack Shafer, Slate,
5/15: Miller’s Double-Crossing

Alexander Cockburn,
CounterPunch, 4/25: The
Case of Judy Miller

39) "The Iraqi people are now free."

So says the current US administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, in a recent New
York Times op-ed. He failed to add that disagreeing can get you shot or arrested
under the terms of the Pentagon’s latest plan for pacifying Iraq, Operation
Sidewinder (see #36), a military op launched last month to wipe out all remaining
Ba’athists and Saddam partisans—meaning, in practice, anyone who resists the
US occupation too zealously.

No links.

40) God told Bush to invade Iraq.

Not long after the September 11 attacks, neoconservative high priest Norman
Podhoretz wrote: "One hears that Bush, who entered the White House without a
clear sense of what he wanted to do there, now feels there was a purpose behind
his election all along; as a born-again Christian, it is said, he believes he
was chosen by God to eradicate the evil of terrorism from the world."

No, he really believes it, or so he would like us to think. The Palestinian
prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that Bush
made the following pronouncement during a recent meeting between the two: "God
told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem
in the Middle East."

Oddly, it never got much play back home.

No links.

---

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

---

This was truly a collaborative effort from start to finish. It began with the
notion of running a week-long marathon of Bush administration lies at my online
Bush Wars column (bushwarsblog.com).
Along the way my e-mail box delivered more research assistance than I’ve ever
received on any single story. I need to thank Jeff St. Clair and the Counterpunch
website (counterpunch.org), which featured the Lies marathon in addition
to posting valuable reportage and essays every day; I also received lots of
lies entries and documentary links from BW readers Rob Johnson, Ted Dibble,
and Donna Johnson, as well as my colleagues Mark Gisleson, Elaine Cassel, Sally
Ryan, Mike Mosedale, and Paul Demko. Dave Marsh provided valuable editing suggestions.

I also found loads of valuable information through Cursor, Buzzflash,
and Antiwar.com, the three best Bush-news links pages on the Internet,
and through research projects on the Bushmen posted at Cooperative Research
(cooperativeresearch.org),
Whiskey Bar (billmon.org), and tvnewslies.org.

But the heart of the effort was all the readers of Bush Wars who sent along
ideas and links that advanced the project. Many thanks to Estella Bloomberg,
Vince Bradley, Angela Bradshaw, Gary Burns, Elaine Cole, George Dobosh, Deborah
Eddy, David Erickson, Casey Finne, Douglas Gault, Jean T. Gordon, Doug Henwood,
George Hunsinger, Peter Lee, Eric Martin, Michael McFadden, George McLaughlin,
Eric T. Olson, Doug Payne, Alan W. Peck, Dennis Perrin, Charles Prendergast,
Publius, Michele Quinn, Ernesto Resnik, Ed Rickert, Maritza Silverio, Marshall
Smith, Robert David Steele, Ed Thornhill, Christopher Veal, and Jennifer Vogel.
And my apologies to anyone else whose e-mails I didn’t manage to save.

---

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