While The White House denies Ron Susskind's "forged letter" - linking Mohammed Atta to Saddam Hussein so Bush could go to war with Iraq, here's a time line and some other facts to make you think about other lies that have been proposed by White House. Little lies can have big consequences! This is to show how these lies are used, (as I have quoted) via people like Bill O'reilly Fox News and beyond - read and then you decide if someone like Robot neo-con, Dick Cheney 'might' have put pressure to take the country to not just one, but other wars if he had the time...Cheney was busy behind the link of Mohammed Atta and could have made sure this letter was put out there, he was down at the CIA offices and pressuring them for a long time, but not only that, he wants Iran too!
Here's the statement by Suskind that would constitute an impeachable offence:
The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind wrote. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al-Qaida, something the vice-president's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."
From David Knowles AOL news 8/5/08:
"While accusations of this magnitude should always be met with skepticism, one only needs to look back to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to realize that such tactics of deception have been employed before to start a war. In fact, as Seymour Hersh recently uncovered, the Bush Administration was planning similar smoke-and-mirrors options for Iran."
And more recently, how about these Iranian ties:
From reporter Gareth Porter - The Iran Attack that Wasn't 8/2/2007 The American Prospect: The revival of the charge of Iranian involvement in the Karbala attack, despite the earlier Petraeus denial, has the all the hallmarks of a White House decision. The alleged Iranian export of arms to Iraqi Shiites, on which the U.S. command briefed the media in Baghdad in February, reflected the administration's decisions in the preceding months to hold Iran responsible for the killing of U.S. troops in Iraq with armor-piercing explosives. After the replacement of the top commander in Iraq with a general who had pledged to carry out the surge strategy chosen by the White House, and the June arrival of a new U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad -- Gen. Bergner -- who had been special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq, the command’s briefings were tied more closely to the White House propaganda machine than ever before.
OR ---David Manning's famous memos - a prewar meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair, he says that Bush admitted that WMD was unlikely to be found in Iraq and then mused on some possible options for justifying a war anyway:
"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
OR --How about this rouse planned by Cheney
EXCLUSIVE: By ThinkProgressive.Org To Provoke War,
Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them»
Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.
In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
This 'letter' was written as if were genuine.
The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’” by Con Coughlin. It ran the day Hussein was captured and was used by the U.S. media. Coughlin was interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"Fox's Bill O'Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, 'Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'" (From Suskind's book, Way of The World)
From CNS James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq
Timeline:December 2, 2001
Secretary of State Colin Powell on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer:
BLITZER: “As you know, some former government officials and perhaps some within the government are saying there are some strong signs that the Iraqis were connected to the September 11 terrorist attack, specifically the meetings in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader, and Iraqi intelligence, an Iraqi intelligence agent. As far as you're concerned, was there a connection there?”
POWELL: “Certainly, these meetings took place.”
December 9, 2001
Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC News’ Meet the Press [link to source]
“It's been pretty well confirmed that [Mohamed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”
December 17, 2001
The U.K.’s Daily Telegraph reports
“Czech police said yesterday they had no evidence that the ringleader of the suicide attacks, Mohammed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague earlier this year.
“…Jiri Kolar, the police chief, said there were no documents showing that Atta visited Prague at any time this year…”
December 28, 2001
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, writes an Op-Ed entitled “The U.S. Must Strike at Saddam Hussein” for the New York Times
“Evidence of a meeting in Prague between a senior Iraqi intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, the Sept. 11 ringleader, is convincing.”
April 28, 2002
Journalist Michael Isikoff reports in “The Phantom Link to Iraq” in Newsweek that ]
September 8, 2002
Vice President Dick Cheney speaks with Tim Russert on NBC News’ Meet the Press
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We've seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center...
Mr. RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It's credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it's unconfirmed at this point.
October 21, 2002
The New York Times reports
“The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, has quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports that Mohamed Atta, the leader in the Sept. 11 attacks, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague just months before the attacks on New York and Washington, according to Czech officials…
“Czech officials did not say precisely when Mr. Havel told the White House to disregard the reports of the meeting, but extensive interviews with leading Czech figures make clear that he did so quietly some time earlier this year in an effort to avoid publicly embarrassing other prominent officials in his government…
“For months, American intelligence and law enforcement officials have cast doubt on the reports of the Prague meeting, which proved to be based on the statements of a single informant, and last week the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, told Congress that his agency could find no evidence to confirm that the meeting took place.”
February 5, 2003 [reported at a later date]
Lawrence Wilkerson, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, chronicled the days he spent at CIA headquarters helping to prepare Powell’s U.N. presentation of February 5, 2003 (from Wilkerson’s testimony on June 26, 2006, before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee’s “Oversight Hearing on Pre-War Intelligence Relating to Iraq”)
“In the rehearsal and discussion sessions at Langley [CIA headquarters], the give and take was mostly the Secretary of State trying to eliminate unsubstantiated and/or unhelpful material and others from the White House trying to keep that material in, or add more. One such incident occurred several times and the final time it occurred provided an example of the Secretary’s growing frustration. Repeatedly, the OVP [Office of the Vice President] or NCS [U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Communications System] staff personnel tried to insert into the presentation the alleged meeting in Prague between al-Qaeda operative and 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence personnel. Repeatedly, Secretary Powell eliminated it based on the DCI’s [Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet’s] refusal to corroborate it. Finally, at one of the last Langley rehearsals, Secretary Powell was stopped in mid-presentation by deputy national security advisor Steve Hadley and asked what had happened to the paragraph describing the meeting in Prague. Secretary Powell fixed Hadley with a firm stare and said with some pique, ‘We took it out, Steve — and it’s staying out.’”
March 19, 2003
The U.S. launches military strikes, commencing the Iraq War.
August 3, 2003
The Boston Globe reports
“Last week, congressional investigators declared in their major report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that after tracing Atta's movements for two years, including trips made under all known aliases, there was no evidence of the Prague meeting. A former intelligence official in the Bush administration told the Globe the CIA obtained evidence soon after the Czech report that the Iraqi agent [al-Ani] was elsewhere at the time of the purported meeting.
“‘The CIA had proof that Iraqi guy was not in Prague at the time,’ said the official, who asked not to be named. ‘The mystery here is why did the CIA allow that story to live when it could disprove it with hard information.’”
September 14, 2003
Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC News’ Meet the Press [link to source]
“With respect to 9/11, of course, we've had the story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know.”
December 19, 2003
Newsweek reports that the FBI has found no evidence to support the alleged meeting
“… [The FBI] has long since discounted claims by Czech intelligence—and widely promoted by some Iraq hawks in the Bush administration—that Atta had flown to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent around April 8, 2001.
“FBI records show Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi checking out of the Diplomat Inn in Virginia Beach, Va., and writing a check for cash for $8,000 for a SunTrust account in that city on April 4, 2001. For the rest of that week, Atta's cell phone was used to make repeated calls to Florida. On April 11, Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Fla. While acknowledging that a few days are unaccounted for, the FBI has found no evidence that Atta departed the country overseas during this period, an official said.”
“… Newsweek has learned that a few months ago, the Czechs quietly acknowledged that they may have been mistaken about the whole thing [Atta allegedly meeting with an Iraqi agent in Prague]. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials now believe that Atta wasn’t even in Prague at the time the Czechs claimed. ‘We looked at this real hard because, obviously, if it were true, it would be huge,’ one senior U.S. law enforcement official told Newsweek. ‘But nothing has matched up.’
Here's some more facts:
November, 2003 New York Times story by James Risen. Risen’s article is about last-minute attempts by Iraq to avert war, using a Lebanese-American intermediary, Imad Hage aqauintance of Richard Perle:
"A week [after February, 2003 meetings in Beirut with the Iraqi Intelligence Service’s chief of foreign operations], Mr. Hage said, he agreed to hold further meetings in Baghdad. When he arrived, he was driven to a large, well-guarded compound, where he was met by a gray-haired man in a military uniform. It was Tahir Jalil Habbush, the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, who is No. 16 on the United States list of most wanted Iraqi leaders. Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush asked him if it was true that he knew Mr. Perle. “Have you met him?”
Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush began to vent his frustration over what the Americans really wanted. He said that to demonstrate the Iraqis’ willingness to help fight terrorism, Mr. Habbush offered to hand over Abdul Rahman Yasin, who has been indicted in United States in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Mr. Yasin fled to Iraq after the bombing, and the United States put up a $25 million reward for his capture.
Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush offered to turn him over to Mr. Hage, but Mr. Hage said he would pass on the message that Mr. Yasin was available.
Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush also insisted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and added, “Let your friends send in people and we will open everything to them.”
Mr. Hage said he asked Mr. Habbush, “Why don’t you tell this to the Bush administration?” He said Mr. Habbush replied cryptically, “We have talks with people.”
Mr. Hage said he later learned that one contact was in Rome between the C.I.A. and representatives of the Iraqi intelligence service. American officials confirm that the meeting took place, but say that the Iraqi representative was not a current intelligence official and that the meeting was not productive.
In addition, there was an attempt to set up a meeting in Morocco between Mr. Habbush and United States officials, but it never took place, according to American officials.
Nouri Sabri,Iraq’s foreign minister secretly told the US in 2002 that Iraq had no
active WMD programs.
• Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center, told an acquaintance just before the war that he expected we would find “Not much, if anything.”-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And finally this to president assclown Bush from Henry Waxman:
This documentation appears in the June 13, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
DOCUMENTATION
Waxman: 'Explain Why
You Cited Forged Evidence'
The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Increasing questions are now being raised within the United States and around the world about whether you and other senior U.S. officials misrepresented the evidence regarding Iraq's nuclear weapons capability. In response, investigations have been launched and your spokesman has stated that everything you said was "valid."[1]
As these investigations move forward. I urge you to explain why you cited forged evidence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear materials in your State of the Union address on January 28, 2003.
I first wrote to you about this matter on March 17, before the Iraq war had begun. As I explained in that letter, your own intelligence experts at the CIA questioned the veracity of the nuclear evidence at the same time that you and other senior Administration officials were repeatedly using the evidence as a major part of the case against Iraq. Yet despite the seriousness of this matter, the only response I received was an ambiguous one-page letter from the State Department that raises far more questions than it answers.
News reports this weekend were filled with accounts of how carefully Secretary Powell prepared for his February 5 address to the United Nations, spending nearly a week at CIA headquarters going over his remarks to ensure their accuracy. But there is no speech given by any government official that is more carefully constructed than a State of the Union address. The State of the Union address takes weeks—not days—to prepare, and every line is reviewed by a myriad of high-ranking officials. That a President could cite forged evidence in such an address on a matter as momentous as impending war should be unthinkable.
There are many complex issues that are now being raised by our failure to date to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These need to be examined closely in the coming months. But explaining your statements in the State of the Union should not take months of investigation—just candor. With the credibility of the United States being called into question around the world, I urge you to address this vital matter without further delay.
The Evidence in Question
The allegation that Iraq sought to obtain nuclear material from an African country was first made publicly by the British government on September 24, 2002, when Prime Minister Tony Blair released a 50-page report on Iraqi efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As the New York Times reported in a front-page article, one of the two "chief new elements" in the report was the claim that Iraq had "sought to acquire uranium in Africa that could be used to make nuclear weapons."[2] According to the Washington Post, the evidence included "a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger."[3]
It is now conceded that these letters were rudimentary forgeries. Recent accounts in the news media explain that the forgers "made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away—including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written."[4]
The world did not learn that this evidence was forged, however, until March 7, 2003, when the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, released the results of his analysis of the evidence. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications that should have been evident to novice intelligence officials. As a result, Director ElBaradei reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic."[5]
We also now know that the CIA was not incompetent in this matter—it had consistently expressed significant doubts about the validity of these documents. Press reports are replete with statements by CIA officials who warned about the lack of credibility of this information.[6] As the Washington Post reported on March 22, CIA officials "communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence."[7] According to another CIA official, "it's not fair to accuse the analysts for what others say about our material."[8] Indeed, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof revealed that Vice President Cheney's office became aware of the evidence early in the process and dispatched a former U.S. ambassador to Niger to investigate. On February 22, 2002—nearly a year before your State of the Union address—the ambassador "reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged."[9]
The Use of the Forged Evidence
Despite the doubts of your own intelligence experts, you and your most senior advisers asserted repeatedly over a period of months that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear material from Niger. The State Department featured the evidence in its written response to the Iraqi weapons declaration in December.[10] National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice made this allegation again on January 23, 2003,1[1] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeated this allegation on January 29, 2003,[12] and senior officials continued to repeat this claim in contacts with press outlets. As a result of the emphasis given the evidence by senior Administration officials, the nuclear evidence was featured on national network news and front-page articles in major national newspapers.[13].
The most prominent use of the forged nuclear evidence occurred during your State of the Union address to Congress. You stated: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[14] As I wrote you on March 17, your statement was worded in a way to suggest that it was carefully crafted to be both literally true and deliberately misleading at the same time. The statement itself may be technically accurate, since this appears to have been official British position. But given what the CIA knew at the time, the implication you intended—that there was credible evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa—-was simply false.
This was not the only time you emphasized Iraq's nuclear threat. Just four days before Congress was scheduled to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, you claimed that Iraq could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.[15] You also raised the ominous specter of a "mushroom cloud" if the war resolution was not adopted.[16] On March 17, just days before the war began, Vice President Cheney said: "We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.[17]
These statements played a pivotal role in shaping congressional and public opinion about the need for military intervention in Iraq. I voted for the congressional resolution condemning Iraq and authorizing the use of force. Like other members, I was particularly influenced by your views about Iraq's nuclear intentions. Although chemical and biological weapons can inflict casualties, no threat is greater than the threat of nuclear weapons and no subject requires greater candor.
The Ambiguous State Department Response
In order to obtain information about your Administration's reliance on the forged nuclear evidence, I wrote to you on March 17, 2003. As I stated in that letter, it is hard to imagine how this situation could have developed. The two most obvious explanations—knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence—both have immediate and profound implications. Consequently, I urged you address the matter without delay and provide an alternative explanation, if there was one.
Unfortunately, to date I have received only a cursory, one-page response from the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs. Although this April 29, 2003, letter asserts that the Administration acted "in good faith," the letter in fact further confuses the situation and raises additional questions.
The State Department letter makes clear that the nuclear evidence from Britain that you cited in your State of the Union address was the evidence that was "discredited" as a forgery. The letter also indicates that this evidence was "available to the U.S." The response thus appears to rule out the unlikely explanation that the CIA did not know the basis of the British evidence when you gave your State of the Union address. But the letter does not begin to explain why you used the obviously forged evidence in your State of the Union address.
The letter says that another Western European nation relayed similar information about Iraq's nuclear program to the United States privately. But the letter acknowledges that the United States did not know the basis of this information until March 4, over a month after the State of the Union, at which time the United States learned that the information was based on the same forged documents. Moreover, the letter reveals that during the period prior to March 4, U.S. intelligence officials were aware that the information might be based on the same discredited information provided by the British and "sought several times to determine the basis for the ... assessment, and whether it was based on independent evidence not otherwise available to the U.S." No explanation is offered for why it took so long to learn the basis of the reporting from this "Western European ally."
At its core, the argument in the State Department letter is ludicrous. U.S. intelligence officials knew that the available Niger evidence was unreliable and based on forged documents. Despite this, the State Department argues that it was acceptable for the United States to use this information as a central part of the case for military action in Iraq, because the United States received reporting from another nation. In essence, the argument seems to be that it is permissible to use fake evidence so long as the evidence can be attributed to another source.
The State Department response also raises questions about the CIA's role in reviewing and clearing various Administration statements relating to the Niger allegation. The letter states that the written information about the forged nuclear evidence provided to the United Nations on December 19 "was a product developed jointly by the CIA and the State Department." But this is contradicted by other published accounts. Just last weekend, the Washington Post quoted a senior intelligence official as saying that the "only" statement that was "reviewed by the intelligence agencies in detail and backed by detailed intelligence" was Secretary Powell's February 5 speech before the United Nations.[18] In fact, according to one administration official, when the State Department document was issued on December 19, "people winced and thought, 'Why are you repeating this trash?' "19
Conclusion
Mr. President, I recognize that you have many demands on your time and that there are many issues that you cannot address. But this issue should be different. The credibility of the United States is now in question.
To date, you have offered no explanation as to why you and your most senior advisers made repeated allegations based on forged documents. Yet your entire pre-emption doctrine depends on the ability of the United States to gather accurate intelligence and make honest assessments. This matter raises fundamental issues that cannot be ignored. So I again request that you respond to my March 17 letter and the additional questions raised in this letter.
Sincerely,
Henry A. Waxman
Ranking Minority Member
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
some articles to look up-
Nicholas D. Kristof, "Missing in Action: Truth," New York Times (May 6, 2003).
U.S. Department of State, Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council (Dec. 19, 2002).
Dr. Condoleeza Rice, "Why We Know Iraq is Lying" (Jan. 23, 2003) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/print/20030123-1.html).
Press Conference with Donald Rumsfeld, General Richard Myers, Cable News Network (Jan. 29, 2003).
"U.S. Accuses Iraqi Weapons Report of Failing to Meet U.N. Demands," NBC Nightly News (Dec. 19, 2002); "Threats and Responses: Report by Iraq; Iraq Arms Report Has Big Omissions, U.S. Officials Say," New York Times (Dec. 12, 2002); "U.S. Issues a List of Shortcomings in Iraqi Arms Declaration," Los Angeles Times (Dec. 20, 2002); "Iraqi Weapons Declaration Full of Holes, U.S. Officials Say," Associated Press (Dec. 12, 2003).
The White House, "President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat" (Oct. 7, 2002) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html); see also "Matters of Emphasis," New York Times (Apr. 23, 2003) (noting that President Bush cited an IABA report for this assertion, but that no such report exists).
U.S. Officials Make It Clear: Exile or War," Washington Post (Mar. 17, 2003).
Tenet Defends Iraq Intelligence," Washington Post (May 31, 2003).
CIA Questioned Documents Linking Iraq, Uranium Ore," Washington Post, (Mar. 22, 2003).
