All 27 UK Foreign Affairs lawyers: Iraq war unlawful. Obama, politicians, US media: no response
All 27 UK Foreign Affairs lawyers: Iraq war unlawful. Obama, politicians, US media: no response
- posted by Editor @ 9:23 AM

Clare Short: Blair misled us and took UK into an illegal war | UK news | guardian.co.uk
Clare Short: Blair misled us and took UK into an illegal war | UK news | guardian.co.uk
- posted by Editor @ 9:58 PM

British Invasion of Iraq Was Illegal: Ex-govt Lawyer�������� : Information Clearing House -� ICH
British Invasion of Iraq Was Illegal: Ex-govt Lawyer�������� : Information Clearing House -� ICH
By Alice Ritchie

January 26, 2010 -- LONDON (AFP) – The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was illegal, a former top British government lawyer told a public inquiry into the war Tuesday, three days before ex-prime minister Tony Blair appears.

"I considered that the use of force against Iraq in March 2003 was contrary to international law," Michael Wood, chief legal advisor to the Foreign Office between 1999 and 2006, told the Chilcot inquiry in London.

"In my opinion, that use of force had not been authorised by the Security Council, and had no other legal basis in international law."

Wood said he told ministers of his concerns but was brushed aside, and in the end the government's top lawyer, attorney general Peter Goldsmith, gave the green light for military action.
...
Goldsmith gave his approval just days before war, saying UN resolution 1441 passed in November 2002 provided a legal base for military action.

Some critics charge that he was pressured into this view, that the conflict was in fact illegal and Blair should be prosecuted accordingly.

Two weeks before the invasion, Goldsmith said a case could be made for war under 1441 but it would be "safest" to get a second UN resolution explicitly authorising force.

When attempts to achieve this collapsed, he gave the go-ahead.

But Wood said that 1441 made clear it was up to the UN Security Council to decide whether Saddam had complied with their demands -- not individual states -- and no such decision had been made.

Wood said he challenged the government's view in January 2003 after then foreign secretary Jack Straw told the US vice president Dick Cheney that it would be "ok" if no second UN resolution were obtained.

He wrote to Straw saying there was "no doubt" that without further Security Council action or any major developments, "the UK cannot lawfully use force against Iraq".

Wood said the minister brushed his concerns aside.

"He (Straw) took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn't used to people taking such a firm position," he said.

Wood's testimony supports that of his former deputy, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned before the invasion because she believed it was illegal.

At the inquiry Tuesday, Wilmshurst said all the Foreign Office lawyers had been "entirely of one view" and she believed Goldsmith was with them until he delivered his legal opinion on March 7, 2003. ...
- posted by Editor @ 9:34 PM

Iraq war was illegal, top lawyer will tell Chilcot inquiry | UK news | The Observer
Iraq war was illegal, top lawyer will tell Chilcot inquiry | UK news | The Observer
Foreign Office official's evidence the day before attorney general Lord Goldsmith appears will increase pressure on Tony Blair

Tony Blair's decision to take Britain to war in Iraq was illegal, the Foreign Office's former chief legal adviser will tell the Chilcot inquiry this week.

The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO's most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution. This will provide an explosive backdrop to the former prime minister's appearance before the inquiry on Friday.

...
A senior legal figure close to the discussions at the time told the Observer: "The advice that was given consistently in the Foreign Office [by Wood] was that war would be unlawful without a second resolution. The important thing is that Foreign Office advice was given consistently in one way, and then the attorney general, right at the end, gave advice to the contrary. That is what will come out."
...

But the question of the legality of war threatens to be the most damaging. Goldsmith is likely to be pressed on whether he was pushed into changing his mind by Blair and senior US officials. At the time, arguments raged on whether UN resolution 1441, which related to Iraq's ceasefire obligations from the first Gulf war, gave legal cover for military action. Because the consensus among lawyers was that it did not, desperate – and ultimately fruitless – attempts, led by Britain and the US, were mounted to win support for a second resolution that would have made the case watertight.

Whitehall sources have revealed that Goldsmith and Wood had worked closely on the issue of the legality of war. But in the days before invasion, Goldsmith abruptly changed his position, declaring that it would in fact be legal. "There was agreement. [Goldsmith] then went to talk to the Americans, the US State Department. And the Americans were very clear what they wanted and what they thought, and that is what changed his mind," said an FO source.

Wood's deputy at the time, former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned two days before the war because she believed the invasion was a "crime of aggression", will appear at the inquiry after Wood on Tuesday.

- posted by Editor @ 9:23 PM

�Dutch Inquiry Finds Iraq War Illegal��� : Information Clearing House -� ICH
�Dutch Inquiry Finds Iraq War Illegal��� : Information Clearing House -� ICH

By Ann Talbot

January 23, 2010 "WSWS" - -A Dutch commission of inquiry has concluded that the US-led 2003 Iraq war was illegal under international law. The conclusion has far-reaching implications. Potentially, it could open up leading politicians and military figures in the US and Britain to prosecution for war crimes.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands set up the Davids Commission in order to avoid a full parliamentary inquiry into the Dutch role in the invasion of Iraq. He headed the caretaker government at the time of the invasion and has rejected the report’s findings. The fact that a commission which was set up with the intention of producing a whitewash has had to come to such damning conclusions points to the weight of evidence that exists for the illegality of the war.

The attempt to maintain the lie that the war was legal is becoming increasingly difficult. The Dutch report entirely rejects the central argument used to justify the actions of the British government and claim that there was a legal basis for the invasion.

“The [UN] Security Council Resolutions on Iraq passed during the 1990s did not constitute a mandate for the US-British military intervention in 2003,” the report concludes. “Despite the existence of certain ambiguities, the wording of Resolution 1441 cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the government did) as authorizing individual Member States to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council’s resolutions, without authorization from the Security Council.”

The report goes on: “The Dutch government’s often repeated view that a second resolution was ‘politically desirable, but not legally indispensable’ is not easy to uphold. The wording and scope of Resolution 1441 cannot be interpreted as such a second resolution. Hence, the military action had no sound mandate under international law.”

Unlike the ongoing Chilcot inquiry in Britain on the war, the Dutch team included legal experts. As Professor Philippe Sands QC, an expert on international law, has pointed out, their conclusion is significant for that reason:

“There has been no other independent assessment on the legality of the war in Iraq and the findings of this inquiry are unambiguous. It concludes that the case argued by the Dutch and British governments, including the then-attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, could not reasonably be argued.

“This is the authoritative view of seven commissioners, including the former president of the Dutch Supreme Court, a former judge of the European Court of justice, and two legal academics.”

The Dutch report will inevitably raise once again the question of the advice that Lord Goldsmith gave to the British government. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, resigned in March 2003, claiming that Goldsmith had told lawyers at the Foreign Office that war against Iraq would be illegal. According to leaked documents, Goldsmith told Blair in July 2002 that regime-change was “not a legal basis for military action.”

In March 2003, Goldsmith warned Blair that he could be indicted under international law if he invaded Iraq without a second resolution. But days later, just before the invasion began, he made a statement in the House of Lords in which he claimed that the war was legal. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:51 PM

Leaked documents reveal No 10 cover-up over Iraq invasion | Politics | guardian.co.uk
Leaked documents reveal No 10 cover-up over Iraq invasion | Politics | guardian.co.uk

Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair's government's attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.

The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's "appalling" failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a "full and insightful" account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

...

Blair had in effect promised George Bush that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action. The leaked documents reveal that "from March 2002 or May at the latest there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation".

Documents leaked in 2005 show that, almost a year before the invasion, Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam Hussein, despite warnings from his closest advisers that it was unjustified. They also show how Blair was planning to justify regime change as an objective, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that the "desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. ...

- posted by Editor @ 2:41 PM

report makes it clear that top officials ... Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld ... knew they were not giving a full and honest account of their justifications fo
Editorial | The Truth About the War | Published: June 6, 2008

It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen.

It has taken five years to finally come to a reckoning over how much the Bush administration knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence to justify that invasion. On Thursday — after years of Republican stonewalling — a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee gave us as good a set of answers as we’re likely to get.
...
The report shows that there was no intelligence to support the two most frightening claims Mr. Bush and his vice president used to sell the war: that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons and had longstanding ties to terrorist groups. It seems clear that the president and his team knew that that was not true, or should have known it — if they had not ignored dissenting views and telegraphed what answers they were looking for.

Over all, the report makes it clear that top officials, especially Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, knew they were not giving a full and honest account of their justifications for going to war. ...
The report was supported by only two of the seven Republicans on the 15-member Senate panel. The five dissenting Republicans first tried to kill it, and then to delete most of its conclusions. They finally settled for appending objections. The bulk of their criticisms were sophistry transparently intended to protect Mr. Bush and deny the public a full accounting of how he took America into a disastrous war. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:36 PM

[Iraq] new motive for the war was revealed: the recognition of Israel by a new democratic Iraq
PBS on Iraq: A Compilation of Deceit | By Morgan Strong | March 30, 2008

There have been five agonizing years of this war in Iraq. Five terrible years of bewilderment and rage.
...
The key figures who promoted the war were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Lewis Libby. Those names were not new, but a new motive for the war was revealed: the recognition of Israel by a new democratic Iraq.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in an interview with Frontline, revealed this motive in the context of his suspicions about Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who was chosen by the Bush administration to run Iraq. ....
...
What is perhaps equally startling, and thoroughly depressing, is the common pettiness of the five – Libby, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld – as they fought desperately to launch this war in Iraq. They would let nothing and no one stand in their way.
...
In 1996, for instance, Perle joined a small group of researchers who advised Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu on his first steps as Israel’s prime minister. (That group also included Douglas Feith, who would be another key Pentagon figure pushing for war with Iraq.)

The working paper, entitled “A Clean Break,” included plans for ousting Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, which was called “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” The paper also advocated an alliance with the United States to confront threats to Israel from Syria and Iran.

Six years later, the Perle-Wolfowitz-Libby tandem, aided and abetted by Cheney and Rumsfeld, implemented exactly that strategy inside the U.S. government. ...
- posted by Editor @ 10:48 AM

eorge W Bush, White House told 935 lies after September 11 ...
George W Bush, White House told 935 lies after September 11 | By staff writers | January 23, 2008 06:24pm | news.com.au

US President George W Bush and other top officials issued almost one thousand false statements about the national security threat from Iraq following the September 11 attacks, according to a study by two not-for-profit organisations.

The Associated Press reports the study, published on the website of the Centre for Public Integrity, concluded the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences”.
...
“In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”

The study found that President Bush alone made 259 false statements – 231 about weapons of mass destruction and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda.
...
“Some journalists – indeed, even some entire news organisations – have since acknowledged that their coverage during those pre-war months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional ‘independent’ validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq.” ...
- posted by Editor @ 6:08 PM

"Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."
Salon: Former CIA officers report Bush 'didn't give a fuck about intelligence' | Jason Rhyne | Published: Thursday September 6, 2007

Months before the Iraq invasion, President Bush apparently ignored a 2002 Oval Office briefing in which CIA director George Tenet provided the president with intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to former Clinton advisor and Salon columnist Sidney Blumenthal.

Reporting in Salon, Blumenthal writes that according to his sources, two former CIA officers,"Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again."

Blumenthal also adds that the intelligence from that day was left out of the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which definitively stated that had WMD.

"The president had no interest in the intelligence," a CIA officer disclosed. "Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

"No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq," Blumenthal writes. "The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD." ...
- posted by Editor @ 10:41 AM

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction ... but Congress did not ...
Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction | Sidney Blumenthal - September 6, 2007

Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD. ...
- posted by Editor @ 10:18 AM

“There was never a serious debate..." ... Cheney, Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith were focused on Iraq in 2003 ...
Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq

WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.
...
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.
...
But Mr. Tenet largely endorses the view of administration critics that Mr. Cheney and a handful of Pentagon officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late 2001 and 2002 even as Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. concentrated mostly on Al Qaeda.

Mr. Tenet describes helping to kill a planned speech by Mr. Cheney on the eve of the invasion because its claims of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq went “way beyond what the intelligence shows.”

“Mr. President, we cannot support the speech and it should not be given,” Mr. Tenet wrote that he told Mr. Bush. Mr. Cheney never delivered the remarks.

Mr. Tenet hints at some score-settling in the book. He describes in particular the extraordinary tension between him and Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, in internal debate over how the president came to say erroneously in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.
...
- posted by Editor @ 8:09 AM

Key participants in the Project for the New American Century and their positions in the Bush administration at the start of the war in Iraq
Krauthammer’s definition of ‘neocon’ | By: Steve on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 9:02 AM - PDT

Charles Krauthammer, Friday:

The decision to go to war was made by a war cabinet consisting of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative.

Key participants in the Project for the New American Century and their positions in the Bush administration at the start of the war in Iraq:

o Richard Cheney, Vice-President
o Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
o Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense
o Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
o Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State
o John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
o Elliot Abrams, Senior Director for Near East, Southwest Asian, and North African Affairs, National Security Council
o James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence; member Defense Policy Board
o Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff, Office of the Vice-President

Whaddaya say, Charles, are PNAC leaders neocons?
- posted by Editor @ 6:06 PM

Office of Special Plans: documents linking al Qa'ida and Iraq found ... proved to be forgeries ...
Tenet Battled With the Office of Special Plans | By Matt Renner | t r u t h o u t | Report | Wednesday 02 May 2007

In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet describes efforts by Pentagon and White House officials to subvert pre-Iraq war intelligence assessment by the CIA.

Tenet focuses on the actions of a group inside the Pentagon that sent the Bush administration bogus intelligence on Iraq's weapons program and ties to terrorist organizations that supported the administration's policy.

This group was recently criticized by a Department of Defense inspector general report from February 9, 2007, which found that a policy-shop known as "the Office of Special Plans," headed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, acted "inappropriately" by cooking intelligence to reflect a "mature and symbiotic" relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. This characterization was never supported by the CIA, but was presented as fact by Feith's office to White House policy makers in the run up to the Iraq war. ...
...
According to Tenet's book, when the bogus intelligence assessment was presented to Tenet in August, 2002, he told the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Vice Admiral Jake Jacoby, “This is entirely inappropriate. You get this back in intelligence channels. I want analysts talking to analysts, not people with agendas.” This instruction was not complied with. Instead, according to the Inspector General report, Feith fast-tracked the information and presented the findings to then Deputy National Security Director Steven Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

Tenet claims that he did not know that the briefings continued despite his direction to Jacoby. As head of the DIA, Jacoby had two bosses, Tenet and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Tenet points out this fact but does not explicitly say that Rumsfeld over-ruled his direction to Jacoby. The Inspector General report concluded that the “inappropriate” activities of Feith's office were authorized by Rumsfeld or his former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz.
...
According to Tenet, White House officials tried to prevent the CIA from publishing their own analysis of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. A draft report of the CIA analysis of that relationship was sent to the White House in December 2002, resulting in "a series of calls from the White House" that asked the CIA to "revise or withdraw the paper." Tenet names the vice president's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley as two of the White House officials who made these calls. Tenet claims that a previous draft of this report was given to the DOD for their feedback. Tenet says that Feith's office responded saying it had objections, "but would make their views known through other channels."

Documents pointing to a close relationship between Iraq and al Qa'ida were discovered in Baghdad after the invasion. After analysis by the CIA and the Secret Service, the documents were proven to be forgeries. According to Tenet, even after being discredited, "These raw, unevaluated documents continued to show up in the hands of senior administration officials without having gone through normal intelligence channels."
- posted by Editor @ 7:17 AM

report criticizes an intelligence assessment by the office of Douglas Feith, then a Pentagon official, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq ...
Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted | Pentagon Report Says Contacts Were Limited | By R. Jeffrey Smith | Washington Post Staff Writer | Friday, April 6, 2007; Page A01

A report criticizes an intelligence assessment by the office of Douglas Feith, then a Pentagon official, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.
- posted by Editor @ 1:46 PM

Fixing the facts: Doug Feith ... + Herald Rhode, John Hannah, David Wurmser, Michael Rubin, Eleana Benador, Abram Shulsky, Ahmed Chalabi, ?...
Fixing the facts... April 05, 2007

According to the DOD IG's quietly released second version of Feith (Office of Special Plans) and the gang, we "re-learn" things we had already known, and yet there is still no legal action on the part of the DOD against Feith? Interesting... from Bloomberg, who buried their lead (emphasis mine):

"Analysts reporting to former Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith told then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, that there were ``fundamental problems with how the intelligence community is assessing information,'' the report shows.

The report concludes the Pentagon provided ``inappropriate'' analysis for its finding of a strong link between Hussein and al- Qaeda -- a finding that Vice President Dick Cheney cited as a rationale for invading Iraq along with the need to disarm the nation of weapons of mass destruction.

The criticism of the intelligence community is one of several on a slide used in the Sept. 16, 2002, White House briefing.

``The slide undercuts'' the CIA and other intelligence agencies, Acting Inspector General Thomas Gimble said in a letter to Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who released the report today.

Inclusion of the slide -- that was omitted from an earlier briefing with then-CIA Director George Tenet -- ``clearly did not bolster support for the intelligence community,'' Gimble wrote." ...
...

The Fabricators (the fixers of fact):

The list of candidates of the likely pre-war intelligence fabricators, for me anyway, is short:

From a go-between angle: people who likely served as a go-between to either Italian intelligence and OVP, or between the OVP and the DIA, on the project:

Herald Rhode, John Hannah, David Wurmser, Michael Rubin, Eleana Benador, Abram Shulsky, Ahmed Chalabi, and a few others, including some more than willing journalists.

From a lower-level managerial angle: people who likely oversaw each smaller element of the project:

John Bolton, Doug Feith, Dov Zakheim, Peter Rodman, William Luti and a few others

From a high-level managerial angle: people who likely oversaw large parts or most if not all of the project:

Elliot Abrams, Scooter Libby, Stephen Hadley, and a few others

The Policy Cabal:

Beyond the above listed - the "decision" - crowd is hard to trace just how close to the Oval Office the fabrication scandal goes. At the very least, the following people from the OVP and DOD are likely implicated: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle.

It is nice, however, to see the IG pointing directly at Feith, as though those below and above him in rank/position, could not have known of what the OSP was doing. ...

- posted by Editor @ 1:42 PM

secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel
The rape of Iraq's oil | March 22, 2007 1:30 PM | Printable version

The Baghdad government has caved in to a damaging plan that will enrich western companies.

The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.

The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up "production sharing partnerships" to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits.

No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist.

This is not a new plan. According to documents obtained from the US State Department by BBC Newsnight under the US Freedom of Information Act, the US oil industry plan drafted early in 2001 for takeover of the Iraqi oilfields (after the removal of Saddam) was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, calling for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oilfields.

This secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. However, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. As Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation later told Newsnight, an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oilfields. ...
- posted by Editor @ 12:37 PM

[Doug Feith / OSP] knowingly cooked up intelligence claiming a direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda ... [4 years after The Guardian found out !]
Pentagon Officer Created Phony Intel on Iraq/al-Qaeda Link | By Matt Renner | t r u t h o u t | Report | Friday 06 April 2007

Newly released documents confirm that a Pentagon unit knowingly cooked up intelligence claiming a direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to win support for a preemptive strike against the country.

A report prepared by the Defense Department's Inspector General for Carl Levin, the Democratic Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, explicitly shows how former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith used his Defense Department position to cook intelligence claiming a connection between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein's regime.

The Inspector General's report, "Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy," focuses specifically on Feith's intelligence gathering operations in the months prior to the March 2003 invasion. An executive summary of the report was declassified in February. The full report was declassified and released Thursday at Levin's request.

"It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon's inspector general concluded that Secretary Feith's office 'developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,' which included 'conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community,' and why the Inspector General concluded that these actions were 'inappropriate,'" Levin said. "Until today, those details were classified and outside the public's view." ...
- posted by Editor @ 3:22 PM

George Bush’s Land Mine: If the Iraqi People Get Revenue Sharing, They Lose Their Oil to Exxon
Friday, March 30, 2007 by CommonDreams.org | George Bush’s Land Mine: If the Iraqi People Get Revenue Sharing, They Lose Their Oil to Exxon | by Richard Behan

George Bush has a land mine planted in the supplemental appropriation legislation working its way through Congress.

The Iraq Accountability Act passed by the House and the companion bill passed in the Senate contain deadlines for withdrawing our troops from Iraq, in open defiance of the President’s repeated objections.

He threatens a veto, but he might well be bluffing. Buried deep in the legislation and intentionally obscured is a near-guarantee of success for the Bush Administration’s true objective of the war-capturing Iraq’s oil-and George Bush will not casually forego that.

This bizarre circumstance is the end-game of the brilliant, ever-deceitful maneuvering by the Bush Administration in conducting the entire scenario of the “global war on terror.”

The supplemental appropriation package requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of “benchmarks” President Bush established in his speech to the nation on January 10 (in which he made his case for the “surge”). Most of Mr. Bush’s benchmarks are designed to blame the victim, forcing the Iraqis to solve the problems George Bush himself created.

One of the President’s benchmarks, however, stands apart. This is how the President described it: “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.” A seemingly decent, even noble concession. That’s all Mr. Bush said about that benchmark, but his brevity was gravely misleading, and it had to be intentional.

The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.

Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.

If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it. ...
- posted by Editor @ 5:44 PM

CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says
CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says | By Walter Pincus | Washington Post Staff Writer | Friday, September 15, 2006; A14

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Although President Bush and other senior administration officials were at that time regularly linking Hussein to al-Qaeda, the CIA's highly sensitive intelligence supporting the contrary view was apparently not passed on to the White House or senior Bush policymakers.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and two GOP colleagues on the committee disclosed this information for the first time in the panel's report on Iraq released last week. They wrote in the "additional views" section of the report that the Cabinet-level Iraqi official "said that Iraq has no past, current, or anticipated future contact with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda" and that the official "added that bin Laden was in fact a longtime enemy of Iraq."

On Sept. 25, 2002, just days after the CIA received the source's information, President Bush told reporters: "Al-Qaeda hides. Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world. . . . [Y]ou can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

According to the three Republicans, the CIA said it did not disseminate the intelligence about the lack of a Hussein-bin Laden connection because "it did not provide anything new."

But other information obtained at the same time from the same source that paralleled what administration officials were saying was immediately passed on to "alert" the president and other senior policymakers, the three Republicans said. A "highly restricted intelligence report" conveyed the source's claim that although Iraq had no nuclear weapon, Hussein was covertly developing one and had stockpiled chemical weapons, according to the committee members. ...
- posted by Editor @ 7:54 AM