archived: 11 - 17 Dec, 2005 Back Next
UPDATED: December 15, 2005
NO WAY HOME
The purpose in Bush’s continuing series of speeches on the Iraqi war is becoming clear. First, Bush is admitting what most Americans have already come to know – the intelligence leading to war in Iraq was wrong.
President George W. Bush accepted responsibility for taking the U.S. to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence while saying the invasion still was justified by the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and international terrorism.
``It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,'' Bush said today in the final speech in a series intended to outline his Iraq strategy. ``Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision.'' -- Bloomberg
Yet, Bush still maintains that the war was justified by the threat Saddam represented and terrorism. The justification for the war is now simple – we have, through the sword, brought democracy to the Middle East.
The election means Iraq ``will be the only constitutional democracy in the Arab world,'' Bush told about 500 invited guests of the Woodrow Wilson Center, a non-partisan organization of foreign policy professionals and scholars. ``Yet we need to remember that these elections are also a vital part of a broader strategy for protecting the American people against the threat of terrorism.''
Successful elections in Iraq also will help spread democracy throughout the region, Bush said.
``Freedom in Iraq will inspire many reforms from Damascus to Tehran,'' Bush said. When Iraq can govern, sustain and defend itself, ``we will gain an ally in the war on terror and a partner for peace in the Middle East.'' -- Bloomberg
What are the benchmarks for success and withdrawal of troops in Iraq? Bush still does not provide concrete bench marks. His speech strongly suggests that American will continue the war until a democratic Iraq and “sustain and defend itself.” It is certainly an amorphous standard. It implies that as long as the insurgency continues in Iraq.
Bush and his administration have been directly critical of those calling for withdrawal of troops that such calls inspire the insurgency to continue. It is time for Americans to consider that Bush’s “stay the course” inspires the insurgents who wish to keep America “pinned” in Iraq, depleting American assets and lives, while fostering the goals of those who wish to engage America in jihad.
Dr. Steven Jonas makes the case again today why Bush’s strategy will not work and he offers a viable plan to extract America from a war that even Bush now admits was conceived on false intelligence. Dr. Jonas’ column is a must read.
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UPDATED: December 13, 2005
CURVEBALL
For those unfamiliar with the name, “Curveball,” is the cover name for an Iraqi “defector,” who provided details of Saddam’s supposed attempt to buy “yellow cake” from Niger to fashion nuclear weapons. Curveball was at the heart of the “mushroom cloud” that Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfield and Rice claimed that Saddam could and would unleash as a justification for war.
Curveball’s intelligence was wrong. The Bush administration has protested that it could not have known that Curveball’s intelligence was faulty and the administration had to make considered judgments from that intelligence.
In April, TPJ alerted readers to a major revelation, that the German security service, who had custody of Curveball had informed American intelligence services well prior to the war in Iraq that Curveball was “crazy:
The incompetence described in the report occasionally descends into farce, particularly over an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball, whose fabricated tales about mobile biological laboratories and their influence on US decision-makers were reminiscent of Graham Greene's accidental spy in Our Man in Havana. Despite warnings that he was "crazy", "a waste of time", and that he had not even been in Iraq at the time of an event he supposedly saw, his claims became the subject of almost 100 Defence Intelligence Agency reports and a focus of the National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002. – Guardian Unlimited
The LA Times has just broken a story that the French thoroughly investigated Curveball’s assertions, found them to be untrue and repeatedly informed American intelligence services that Curveball’s assertions were false (emphasis added):
More than a year before President Bush declared in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.
The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described by the retired chief of the French counter-intelligence service and a former CIA official during interviews last week, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002.
The French conclusions were reached after extensive on-the-ground investigations in Niger and other former French colonies, where the uranium mines are controlled by French companies, the official said. He said the French investigated at the CIA's request.
The account of the former intelligence official, Alain Chouet, was "at odds with our understanding of the issue," a U.S. government official said. The U.S. official declined to elaborate and spoke only on condition that neither he nor his agency be named.
However, the essence of Chouet's account — that the French repeatedly investigated the Niger claim, found no evidence to support it and warned the CIA — was extensively corroborated by a former CIA official and a French government official.
The repeated warnings from France's Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, DGSE, did not prevent the Bush administration from making the case aggressively that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons materials.
It was not the first time a foreign government tried but failed to warn U.S. officials off of dubious prewar intelligence. In the "Curveball" case, an Iraqi who defected to Germany claimed to have knowledge of Iraq's biological weapons. Bush and other U.S. officials cited Curveball's claims even as German intelligence officials argued that he was unstable, unreliable and incorrect.
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson also investigated Curveball’s allegations and found them to be untrue.
The Germans, the French and America’s own Ambassador Wilson all provided direct contradiction of Curveball. The question remains: if all of the sources discredited Curveball, how did President Bush and the rest of his administration come to rely on Curveball?
Junkie Editor Michael Carmichael has provided a glimpse into the answer: Ahmad Chalabi, who unsuccessfully supported by the Bush administration to lead Iraq. As Carmichael noted (emphasis added):
Ahmad Chalabi has some very curious associations for a potential leader of the “democratic” reincarnation of Iraq. In Baghdad, he commands a private army with its own private internal security force. The head of Chalabi’s security force is one, Araz Habib. Curiously, Ahmad Chalabi’s nephew, Salem Chalabi, was the Chief Prosecutor of Saddam Hussein. However, that prestigious appointment was brought to an abrupt end when he was sacked following his arrest for the murder of Haitham Fadhil, a government official who was investigating his linkage to fraud and other suspicious financial dealings. While those circumstances are curious, it is even more curious that Salem Chalabi, a man now accused of murder, is a legal associate of Zell & Feith, the Tel-Aviv law office of Douglas Feith, the former Under-Secretary of the Pentagon and a stalwart proponent of aggressive neoconservative interventions in the Middle East in order to reshape the region along lines acceptable to the most extreme Zionists inhabiting Israel’s right wing party, Likud. . . .
From another perspective entirely, Congressman John Conyers has sent a letter to Ahmad Chalabi politely requesting a meeting with him . . . . In the letter, Congressman Conyers explains his desire to discuss Chalabi’s role in the manipulation of the bogus intelligence that drove the US into war with Iraq. In the text of the letter, Congressman Conyers makes it clear that he is particularly keen to interrogate Chalabi about the intelligence provided from [Chalabi’s] undercover source known mysteriously as, “Curveball.”
The road of fabricating the intelligence that lead to war is now direct and clear. Chalabi’s Curveball to Under-Secretary of the Pentagon Douglas Feith and the neoconservative “cabal” described by Secretary of State Powell’s former Chief of Staff. Ultimately, Feith and the neoconservative chain is linked to the Project for a New American Century.
TPJ has repeatedly noted that the Project for the New American Century advocated America’s military intervention in Iraq and the provided the blueprint for Bush administration’s war. The report was written in 2000, long before current events developed in Iraq. Recent developments suggest that Bush was, in fact, executing PNAC’s vision of the new world order! Consider the following carefully.
Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a neo-conservative think thank. The report is entitled, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” The major points of the report are [The following material is taken almost verbatim from the source material]: -- Sunday Herald
1. While Iraq provides immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
2. 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'.
3. This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
4. The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that advocating that the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'. . . .
5. [R]efers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
6. [D]escribes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
7. [R]eveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
8. [S]ays even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
9. [S]potlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in Southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratization in China';
10. [C]alls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
11. [H]ints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';
12. [A]nd pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
For years, the neoconservatives at PNAC were seen as a “fringe” political element. Presidents Reagan and Bush I had largely eschewed these neoconservatives’ grand scheme for a new world order.
Bush II and the Republican Party have simply adopted PNAC’s view of the world and the United States’ role in it. Is this the Party that Americans want to lead the United States into the future?_____________________________________________
JUST A PIECE OF PAPER?
Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue has just released another macabre insight into President Bush. Bush summoned Republican Congressional leaders to the White House to urge extension of the Patriot Act without significant changes to the expansive provisions of that Act. Thompson reports the following exchange occurred during the meeting:
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.” -- Capitol Hill Blue (emphasis added)
Republican controlled committees have made some changes to the Patriot Act in the face of opposition. However, a fight in the Senate is in the offing:
Congressional Republican leaders will press for passage next week of a new Patriot Act to combat terrorism, but a Senate filibuster looms on a measure that liberal and conservative critics alike say is a threat to individual liberties. . . .
[L]awmakers in both parties attacked the measure. "This battle is not over," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who complained that the bill lacked "adequate safeguards to protect our constitutional freedoms." He vowed to do everything he could, including a filibuster, to stop the bill from passing.
It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. While Republican officials seemed confident the bill would pass the House, it was not clear Thursday night that it could command the level of support needed for Senate passage as well.
Feingold was the only senator to vote against the original Patriot Act, which passed in the days following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Now, four years later, lawmakers in both parties appear more willing to express their opposition, on grounds that the bill fails to protect privacy rights. Three Republican and three Democratic senators issued a statement calling for revisions to give law enforcement "the tools they need while providing safeguards to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans." The six included Republicans John Sununu of New Hampshire, Larry Craig of Idaho and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, plus Feingold and fellow Democrats Richard Durbin of Illinois and Ken Salazar of Colorado.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid intends to oppose the bill, based on what he has reviewed to date, according spokesman Jim Manley. He said the Nevada lawmaker needs to consult with fellow Democrats before deciding whether to join a filibuster.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., who is the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced opposition to the bill, but also declined to say whether he would join Feingold. – Yahoo News
Will Democrats rise to defend the Constitution, which, for most Americans, is more than just a “goddamned piece of paper.”
The NYT headline reads:
U.S., Under Fire, Eases Its Stance in Climate Talks
Behind the headline there is an even more compelling story. World leaders met in Montreal to discuss and formulate action policy on global warming at the UN Climate Change Conference. President Clinton was scheduled to address the assembly.
The Bush administration had a different plan:
Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering . . . in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity.
Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said.
The threat set in motion a flurry of frantic back-channel negotiations between conference organizers and aides to Bush and Clinton that lasted into the night on Thursday, and at one point Clinton flatly told his advisers that he was going to pull out and not deliver the speech, the source said.
“It’s just astounding,” the source told New York Magazine. “It came through loud and clear from the Bush people—they wouldn’t sign the deal if Clinton were allowed to speak.” Clinton spokesman Jay Carson confirmed the behind the dustup took place and that the former president had decided not to go out of fear of harming the negotiations, but Carson declined to comment further. – New York Times Magazine
President Clinton addressed the conference. In a pointed comment on the Bush administration, Clinton:
declared to waves of applause that just as the United States had taken a precautionary approach in its fight against terrorism, "there is no more important place in the world to apply the principle of precaution than the area of climate change."
"I think it's crazy for us to play games with our children's future," Mr. Clinton said. "We know what's happening to the climate, we have a highly predictable set of consequences if we continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we know we have an alternative that will lead us to greater prosperity." – New York Times
The message for Democrats is simple – Bush simply does not want Americans to hear the truth on global warming. His administration has “scrubbed” official reports and changed research results to obscure the truth as noted in these previous TPJ articles:
RAPING THE ENVIRONMENT: Republicans readjust their message to dispute that the science of global warming even though the science documenting global warming is “closing” the issue.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws . . . . Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats.
ENVIRONMENTAL COLLATERAL DAMAGE: Republican leaders instruct Congressional Republicans to tell voters that global warming has not been proved, that there are no clear links between air pollution and childhood asthma and that America’s rivers and lakes aren’t nearly as polluted as the Environmental Protection Agency says they are.
GUNS OR WATER
If the Bush administration attempt to “scrubb” President Clinton’s speech to the UN Climate Change Conference seems rather trivial; it belies a serious problem in Bush’s leadership.
Americans are spending billions of dollars in Iraq every month at a time when scientists are warning that America’s Great Lakes are nearing environmental collapse:
Stresses from polluted rivers to invasive species threaten to trigger an ecological breakdown in the Great Lakes, a group of scientists hoping to sway U.S. environmental policy said on Thursday.
Seventy-five scientists who study the world's largest collective body of fresh water released their report on the myriad problems that need cleanup or restoration ahead of two key policy announcements next week.
"This is just a critical period for the Great Lakes," Andy Buchsbaum, director of the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes office, said about next week's announcements.
A task force comprising federal agencies, Congress, local government officials and regional Indian tribes is scheduled to release its much-anticipated final plan for preserving the Great Lakes requested by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2004.
The body's preliminary report in July recommended $20 billion in federal, state and private funding over 15 years to upgrade antiquated municipal sewer systems, restore 500,000 acres of wetlands, clean polluted harbors and bays, and pay for other efforts.
But a federal oversight group subsequently suggested to the White House that the budget was too tight to allow additional funding. – US News
Three months of the Iraq war costs about 21 billion dollars, more than enough to protect the Great Lakes. Bush’s war in Iraq reduces the proposition to simple terms for millions of Americans dependent on the Great Lakes – guns or clean water to drink.
AND BUSH PLAYS ON
Bush administration officials are crossing the United States to tout an improving American economy. Specifically, Gross National Product rose by slightly over 4% in the third quarter and labor productivity was up. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow concludes:
In just the last week, we've learned that GDP growth was a robust 4.3 percent in the third quarter. That's strong growth for any time, and it happened when the country faced devastating natural disasters. . . .
Wages, by the way, will be the next number to rise. Historically, when an economy enters a recession, business income tends to fall more rapidly than the incomes of workers. In the early stages of the economic expansion that follows, income tends to rise faster for business than for workers. Ultimately, however, there is always a tipping point, when incomes rise for workers and business combined, but workers once again increase their incomes faster than businesses. We're approaching that tipping point now. -- Reuters
Readers will carefully note that what Secretary Snow is saying that business profits are up and American workers will see an increase in wages soon. That is a message the Bush administration has been touting for months.
The reality:
In Massachusetts: “Home mortgage foreclosure filings are on the rise in gritty cities and leafy suburbs, according to a new report showing a 35 percent increase statewide through October. Filings in suburban Reading more than tripled and there's been a 113 percent increase in Lawrence compared with the same period last year, according to Land Court filings tracked by Framingham-based ForeclosuresMass.
"It spans the whole gamut of income levels," said Jeremy Shapiro, president of ForeclosuresMass.”
Forecasters are predicting higher foreclosure rates nationally next year. “Mortgage delinquencies among homeowners with high-cost loans will rise by 10 to 15 percent in 2006, as borrowers struggle with higher interest rates, high debt levels and higher energy costs amid flattening home prices, a new report from investment analyst Fitch Ratings predicts. Consequently, overall mortgage delinquencies are likely to rise next year, as well, according to the report's authors.”
Nationally, “[a] sustained decline will hit the U.S. housing market next year, costing the nation as many as 800,000 jobs, according to a new economic report released Wednesday. The slowdown is likely to last several years, with as many as 500,000 construction jobs and 300,000 financial sector positions lost, the quarterly Anderson Forecast predicted. "We expect housing to start slowing the economy this quarter or the next," said Edward Leamer, director of the study done at the University of California, Los Angeles.”
Bush administration policy is still bleeding jobs. Ford Motor Co. will unveil a restructuring plan later Wednesday that calls for the elimination of up to 30,000 jobs within five years, according to the Detroit News. The paper said Ford's board plans to announce the closing of at least 10 assembly and component plants as part of the restructuring.
And more jobs are going overseas. These companies announced significant job hires in India: Microsoft Corp plans to invest $1.7 billion in India over four years and employ another 3,000 people to deepen its presence in the fast-growing software player, chairman Bill Gates said on Wednesday; CISCO is likely to invest up to $1 billion in India; and J P Morgan Chase is planning to hire 4,500 graduates in India over the next two years, with the aim of moving 30 per cent of its back office and support staff at its investment bank offshore by the end of 2007.
One graph paints the reality. Bush’s economic “recovery” is extremely weak compared to other periods in American history:
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Democrats should be making the case to every American.
Last Update: 05/07/2006