-IRAQ WAR INTELLIGENCE:?@MoveOn.org

MoveOn Bulletin
Friday, July 4, 2003
Noah T. Winer, Editor
noah.winer@moveon.org

Subscribe online at:
http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/

CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. One Link
3. Niger Forgeries
4. Misrepresentation
5. Powell and Blix Have Their Doubts
6. Intelligence Sources
7. Impeachment
8. British and U.S. Inquiries
9. Ends Justify the Means
10. Misleader
11. Credits
12. About the Bulletin

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INTRODUCTION
Arguing for the necessity of a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, U.S.
President George W. Bush and other administration officials cited
intelligence that Saddam Hussein’s government possessed weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) in violation of United Nations Security Council
resolutions.

Not only had Iraq manufactured chemical and biological weapons, the
administration contended, they had attempted to obtain materials for
nuclear weaponry. In one address, Bush said: “Intelligence gathered by
this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime
continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever
devised.”

Yet more than two months after Bush declared the end of major combat
operations in Iraq, no WMDs have been found. While he still insists
such weapons will be discovered, evidence mounts that his
administration’s drive for war was based on forged, inaccurate, and
deliberately misconstrued intelligence.

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ONE LINK
No time for more? Read the New York Times’ Paul Krugman on the Bush
administration’s “denial and deception” to justify war in Iraq and why
Congress won’t confront these distortions.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0624-04.htm

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NIGER FORGERIES
During the build-up to war, British and U.S. officials cited letters
indicating Iraq had attempted to obtain nuclear material from the
central African country of Niger. On March 7, shortly before the war
began, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, declared the documents had proven to be
forgeries.
http://www.moveon.org/r?457

The C.I.A. had debunked the Niger documents long before Bush began
using them as evidence. The agency urged the State Department not to
cite the forged letters when challenging Iraq’s weapons declaration in
December.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-06-12-niger-usat_x.htm

In a March 17 letter to President Bush, U.S. Representative Henry
Waxman called upon the President to explain the situation. As he said,
“The two most obvious explanations — knowing deception or
unfathomable incompetence — both have immediate and serious
implications.”
http://www.house.gov/waxman/text/admin_iraq_march_17_let.htm

Rep. Waxman has prepared two excellent factsheets: “The Bush
Administration’s Use of the Forged Iraq Nuclear Evidence” and “What
Intelligence Officials Knew about the Forged Iraq Nuclear Evidence.”
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_admin/admin_nuclear_evidence.htm

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MISREPRESENTATION
The Observer reports that the two vehicles Bush and Blair claim are
mobile biological weapons labs are probably used to produce hydrogen
for artillery balloons.
http://www.moveon.org/r?458

A memo from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity to President
Bush:
“What is at play here is a policy and intelligence fiasco of
monumental proportions.”
http://truthout.org/docs_03/050503D.shtml

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POWELL AND BLIX HAVE THEIR DOUBTS
“[U.S. Secretary of State Colin] Powell’s team removed dozens of pages
of alleged evidence about Iraq’s banned weapons and ties to terrorists
from a draft of his speech, US News and World Report says today. At
one point, he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing to
intelligence claims that he declared: ‘I’m not reading this. This is
bullshit,’ according to the magazine.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,968581,00.html

UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who retired on Monday:
“It is sort of fascinating that you can have 100 percent certainty
about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty of about where
they are.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0623-10.htm

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INTELLIGENCE SOURCES
>From the Washington Post:
“A still-classified national intelligence report circulating within
the Bush administration…portrayed a far less clear picture about the
link between Iraq and al Qaeda than the one presented by the
president….”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19822-2003Jun21

“In this report we present the publicly available data that U.S. and
UK leaders chose to ignore in the pre-war debate…. The reason those
now searching for weapons are finding only traces, remnants, and
precursors is that previous policies of sanctions and UN weapons
inspection and destruction actually worked.”
http://www.fourthfreedom.org/php/t-d-index.php?hinc=Unproven.hinc

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on Rumsfeld’s new Office of
Special Plans. Populated with associates of the Project for the New
American Century, “the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the
Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency…as President Bush’s main
source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons
of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda.”
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?030512fa_fact

>From The New Republic:
A former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee admitted,
“People [kept] telling you first that things weren’t right, weird
things going on, different people saying, ‘There’s so much pressure,
you know, they keep telling us, go back and find the right answer,’
things like that.”
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=ackermanjudis063003

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IMPEACHMENT
John Dean, President Nixon’s White House counsel, says the case for
impeachment would be easy legally, but impossible politically:
“To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war
based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate
misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be ‘a
high crime’ under the Constitution’s impeachment clause. It would also
be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal
anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony ‘to defraud the
United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any
purpose.'”
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html

A superb interview with Dean from BuzzFlash:
“Impeachment is a political proceeding, of quasi-legal nature.
Republicans are not going to impeach their president. To the contrary,
it is very clear they would defend him.”
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/06/17_dean.html

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BRITISH AND U.S. INQUIRIES
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Tony Blair is under fire for his
dossier alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. An
inquiry underway in the Parliament has heard devastating testimony
from former foreign secretary Robin Cook and former international
development secretary Clare Short, both of whom resigned over Blair’s
claim that Iraq was a “clear and serious threat.”
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,987816,00.html

An Associated Press report on the Congressional inquiry into the Bush
administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0626-10.htm

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ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS
>From the Village Voice:
“New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman shrugged off WMD hype as
a necessary selling technique for Bush, arguing that we hit Hussein
‘because we could’ and that what matters is whether we succeed at
building a ‘progressive Arab regime.’ In other words, the ends justify
the means.”
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0325/cotts.php

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MISLEADER
As regular Bulletin readers may know, the Bulletin topics aren’t
necessarily part of current MoveOn campaigns. The issue of Iraq war
intelligence, however, is the focus of MoveOn’s “Misleader”
advertising campaign. Sign the petition to demand that Congress
establish an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate and
hold the President and his officials accountable if they manipulated
or fabricated intelligence to justify taking the country to war.
http://www.moveon.org/distortion/

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CREDITS
Research team:
Leah Appet, Russ Juskalian, Kate Kressmann-Kehoe, Janelle Miau, Sarah
Parady, Kim Plofker, and Jesse Rhodes.

Editing team:
David Taub Bancroft, Nancy Evans, Judy Green, and Rita Weinstein.

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