What to say. I had planned to send either a wonderful Chomsky interview or an equally gripping and important one by Der Spiegel with Joseph Stiglitz. But these, top-two NY Times news articles, in my opinion, signal a sea-change in U.S. politics which will last well beyond the November election. How the Republican Party can withstand this is questionable (Bush is not only incompetent but dishonest and a hypocrite - a deadly duo for believers and others,) and whether or how Democrats will change with pressures from below is on a table rising inevitably on all fronts. More, later. Click on the Times website for graphs and maps.
Ed http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/world/middleeast/09report.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th The New York Times U.S. Study Paints Somber Portrait of Iraqi Discord By ERIC SCHMITT and EDWARD WONG Published: April 9, 2006 WASHINGTON, April 8 - An internal staff report by the United States Embassy and the military command in Baghdad provides a sobering province-by-province snapshot of Iraq's political, economic and security situation, rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces "serious" and one "critical." The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top American politicians and military officials. The report, 10 pages of briefing points titled "Provincial Stability Assessment," underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in those provinces generally described as nonviolent by American officials. There are alerts about the growing power of Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, several of which the United States helped put into power, and rival militias in the south. The authors also point to the Arab-Kurdish fault line in the north as a major concern, with the two ethnicities vying for power in Mosul, where violence is rampant, and Kirkuk, whose oil fields are critical for jump-starting economic growth in Iraq. The patterns of discord mapped by the report confirm that ethnic and religious schisms have become entrenched across much of the country, even as monthly American fatalities have fallen. Those indications, taken with recent reports of mass migrations from mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, show that Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes - sometimes political, sometimes violent - taking place in those mixed areas where different groups meet. The report, the first of its kind, was written over a six-week period by a joint civilian and military group in Baghdad that wanted to provide a baseline assessment for conditions that new reconstruction teams would face as they were deployed to the provinces, said Daniel Speckhard, an American ambassador in Baghdad who oversees reconstruction efforts. The writers included officials from the American Embassy's political branch, reconstruction agencies and the American military command in Baghdad, Mr. Speckhard said. The authors also received information from State Department officers in the provinces, he said. The report was part of a periodic briefing on Iraq that the State Department provides to Congress, and has been shown to officials on Capitol Hill, including those involved in budgeting for the reconstruction teams. It is not clear how many top American officials have seen it; the report has not circulated widely at the Defense Department or the National Security Council, spokesmen there said. A copy of the report, which is not classified, was provided to The New York Times by a government official in Washington who opposes the way the war is being conducted and said the confidential assessment provided a more realistic gauge of stability in Iraq than the recent portrayals by senior military officers. It is dated Jan. 31, 2006, three weeks before the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, which set off reprisals that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Recent updates to the report are minor and leave its conclusions virtually unchanged, Mr. Speckhard said. The general tenor of the Bush administration's comments on Iraq has been optimistic. On Thursday, President Bush argued in a speech that his strategy was working despite rising violence in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney, on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," suggested last month that the administration's positive views were a better reflection of the conditions in Iraq than news media reports. "I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality," Mr. Cheney said, "than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad." In their public comments, the White House and the Pentagon have used daily attack statistics as a measure of stability in the provinces. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters recently that 12 of 18 provinces experienced "less than two attacks a day." Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on March 5 that the war in Iraq was "going very, very well," although a few days later, he acknowledged serious difficulties. In recent interviews and speeches, some administration officials have begun to lay out the deep-rooted problems plaguing the American enterprise here. At the forefront has been Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, who has said the invasion opened a "Pandora's box" and, on Friday, warned that a civil war here could engulf the entire Middle East. On Saturday, Mr. Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior military commander in Iraq, issued a statement praising some of the political and security goals achieved in the last three years, but also cautioning that "despite much progress, much work remains." Mr. Speckhard, the ambassador overseeing reconstruction, said the report was not as dire as its assessments might suggest. "Really, this shows there's one province that continues to be a major challenge," he said. "There are a number of others that have significant work to do in them. And there are other parts of the country that are doing much better." But the report's capsule summaries of each province offer some surprisingly gloomy news. The report's formula for rating stability takes into account governing, security and economic issues. The oil-rich Basra Province, where British troops have patrolled in relative calm for most of the last three years, is now rated as "serious." The report defines "serious" as having "a government that is not fully formed or cannot serve the needs of its residents; economic development that is stagnant with high unemployment, and a security situation marked by routine violence, assassinations and extremism." British fatalities have been on the rise in Basra in recent months, with attacks attributed to Shiite insurgents. There is a "high level of militia activity including infiltration of local security forces," the report says. "Smuggling and criminal activity continues unabated. Intimidation attacks and assassination are common." The report states that economic development in the region, long one of the poorest in Iraq, is "hindered by weak government." The city of Basra has widely been reported as devolving into a mini-theocracy, with government and security officials beholden to Shiite religious leaders, enforcing bans on alcohol and mandating head scarves for women. Police cars and checkpoints are often decorated with posters or stickers of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebellious cleric, or Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric whose party is very close to Iran. Both men have formidable militias. Mr. Hakim's party controls the provincial councils of eight of the nine southern provinces, as well as the council in Baghdad. In a color-coded map included in the report, the province of Anbar, the wide swath of western desert that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, is depicted in red, for "critical." The six provinces categorized as "serious" - Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and three others to the north - are orange. Eight provinces deemed "moderate" are in yellow, and the three Kurdish provinces are depicted in green, for "stable." The "critical" security designation, the report says, means a province has "a government that is not functioning" or that is only "represented by a single strong leader"; "an economy that does have the infrastructure or government leadership to develop and is a significant contributor to instability"; and "a security situation marked by high levels of AIF [anti-Iraq forces] activity, assassinations and extremism." The most surprising assessments are perhaps those of the nine southern provinces, none of which are rated "stable." The Bush administration often highlights the relative lack of violence in those regions. For example, the report rates as "moderate" the two provinces at the heart of Shiite religious power, Najaf and Karbala, and points to the growing Iranian political presence there. In Najaf, "Iranian influence on provincial government of concern," the report says. Both the governor and former governor of Najaf are officials in Mr. Hakim's religious party, founded in Iran in the early 1980's. The report also notes that "there is growing tension between Mahdi Militia and Badr Corps that could escalate" - referring to the private armies of Mr. Sadr and Mr. Hakim, which have clashed before. The report does highlight two bright spots for Najaf. The provincial government is able to maintain stability for the province and provide for the people's needs, it says, and religious tourism offers potential for economic growth. But insurgents still manage to occasionally penetrate the tight ring of security. A car bomb exploded Thursday near the golden-domed Imam Ali Shrine, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens. Immediately to the north, Babil Province, an important strategic area abutting Baghdad, also has "strong Iranian influence apparent within council," the report says. There is "ethnic conflict in north Babil," and "crime is a major factor within the province." In addition, "unemployment remains high." Throughout the war, American commanders have repeatedly tried to pacify northern Babil, a farming area with a virulent Sunni Arab insurgency, but they have had little success. In southern Babil, the new threat is Shiite militiamen who are pushing up from Shiite strongholds like Najaf and Karbala and beginning to develop rivalries among themselves. Gen. Qais Hamza al-Maamony, the commander of Babil's 8,000-member police force, said his officers were not ready yet to intervene between warring militias, should it come to that, as many fear. "They would be too frightened to get into the middle," he said in an interview. If the American troops left Babil, he said, "the next day would be civil war." *** http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/washington/09leak.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th Iraq Findings Leaked by Cheney's Aide Were Disputed By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID BARSTOW Published: April 9, 2006 WASHINGTON, April 8 - President Bush's apparent order authorizing a senior White House official to reveal to a reporter previously classified intelligence about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain uranium came as the information was already being discredited by several other officials in the administration, interviews and documents from the time show. A review of the records and interviews conducted during and after the crucial period in June and July of 2003 also show that what the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., said he was authorized to portray as a "key judgment" by intelligence officers had in fact been given much less prominence in the most important assessment of Iraq's weapons capability. Mr. Libby said he drew on that report, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, when he spoke with the reporter. However, the conclusions about Mr. Hussein's search for uranium appear to have been buried deeper in the report in part because of doubts about their reliability. The new account of the interactions among Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby was spelled out last week in a court filing by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case. It adds considerably to a picture of an administration in some disarray as the failure to discover illicit weapons in Iraq had undermined the central rationale for the American invasion in March 2003. Against the backdrop of what has previously been disclosed, the court filing sheds particular light on how Mr. Bush and some of his top deputies had begun to pull in different directions. Even as some officials, including Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, started to reveal deep doubts that Mr. Hussein had sought uranium to reconstitute his nuclear program, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were seeking to disseminate information suggesting that they had acted on credible intelligence, while not discussing their actions with other top aides. Mr. Fitzgerald, in his filing, said that Mr. Libby had been authorized to tell Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, on July 8, 2003, that a key finding of the 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq was that Baghdad had been vigorously seeking to acquire uranium from Africa. But a week earlier, in an interview in his State Department office, Mr. Powell told three other reporters for The Times that intelligence agencies had essentially rejected that contention, and were "no longer carrying it as a credible item" by early 2003, when he was preparing to make the case against Iraq at the United Nations. Mr. Powell's queasiness with some of the intelligence has been well known, but the new revelations suggest that long after he had concluded the intelligence was faulty, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were still promoting it. Much remains unknown about that period. In his filing, Mr. Fitzgerald recounted a prosecutor's summary of Mr. Libby's testimony to the grand jury. Mr. Libby was, in turn, describing conversations with Mr. Cheney that included the vice president's description of discussions he had had with Mr. Bush. The White House is not commenting on the issue, saying it is still pending in court, but it has not disputed any of the assertions in the court filing. Mr. Libby has also not disputed the assertions. The events took place at a time when the administration's failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq had raised serious questions about the credibility of prewar intelligence. The White House was finding itself under fire from critics, like former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who were suggesting that the administration's claims about Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium, featured in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in 2003, had been exaggerated. The court filing asserts that Mr. Bush authorized the disclosure of the intelligence in part to rebut claims that Mr. Wilson was making, including those in a television appearance and in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003. The filing revealed for the first time testimony by Mr. Libby saying that Mr. Bush, through Mr. Cheney, had authorized Mr. Libby to tell reporters that "a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." In fact, that was not one of the "key judgments" of the document. Instead, it was the subject of several paragraphs on Page 24 of the document, which also acknowledged that Mr. Hussein had long possessed 500 tons of uranium that was under seal by international inspectors, and that no intelligence agencies had ever confirmed whether he had obtained any more of the material from Africa. A report by the British in 2004, however, concluded that there was a reasonable basis to conclude that Mr. Hussein had sought to obtain uranium from Africa. Once enriched, uranium can be used for weapons fuel. In addition to Mr. Powell, other administration officials, speaking on a not-for-attribution basis in early July 2003, were also acknowledging that the intelligence was widely known as seriously flawed. Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much publicly in a White House briefing on July 7, 2003. But if the new court filing is correct, the next day, Mr. Libby, on behalf of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, provided an exaggerated account of the intelligence conclusions. The court filing by Mr. Fitzgerald does not assert exactly when the conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney took place, or exactly when Mr. Cheney communicated its contents to Mr. Libby, except that it was before July 8, 2003. The context of Mr. Fitzgerald's assertions makes clear, however, that the conversation took place in late June or early July 2003. Mr. Libby also described the intelligence estimate to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post earlier, on June 27, 2003. Mr. Fitzgerald's latest filing also describes the degree to which senior White House officials kept information from one another. Even as the president was dispatching Mr. Libby to disclose what until then had been classified intelligence to Ms. Miller of The Times, other White House officials, including Stephen J. Hadley, now Mr. Bush's national security adviser, were debating whether this same information should be formally declassified and made public, prosecutors assert. But Mr. Libby "consciously decided not to make Mr. Hadley aware of the fact that defendant himself had already been disseminating the N.I.E. by leaking it to reporters while Mr. Hadley sought to get it formally declassified," Mr. Fitzgerald's motion states. Mr. Hadley's spokesman declined to comment on the filing on Friday. But a senior official close to Mr. Hadley said that "it appears that the only three people who knew about the instant declassification were Dick Cheney, George Bush and Scooter Libby." The official refused to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the issue. Why those three men were acting so quietly remains a mystery, and Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have never discussed it in public. Aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were beginning to suggest at the time that any exaggerations about Iraq's weapons program had been the fault of the C.I.A., not the White House. Mr. Fitzgerald argued in his filing to the court last week that by July 8, Mr. Libby was trying to rebut the Op-Ed article in The Times, published by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson reported in that article that he had been sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to search for evidence of the transaction, and reported back that there was insufficient evidence that any serious effort had taken place. "The evidence will show that the July 6, 2003, Op-Ed by Mr. Wilson was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," Mr. Fitzgerald argued. But in interviews, other former and current senior officials have offered alternative explanations. "Remember, this was taking place in the middle of the White House-C.I.A. war," one former White House official who witnessed the events said this week, refusing to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the subject. As the controversy arose early that summer over why Mr. Bush had included mention of Iraqi uranium in his 2003 State of the Union address, the official recalled, White House officials were convinced that the C.I.A. was placing the blame on the president, suggesting he had politicized the intelligence. By releasing Mr. Libby to discuss the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate, the official said, "they were dumping this back in Langley's lap," making it clear that Mr. Bush had relied on information provided by the intelligence agencies. The C.I.A. headquarters are in Langley, Va. Later that week, George J. Tenet, then the C.I.A. director, took responsibility for the error, saying he had never read over the draft of the State of the Union address that had been sent to him. According to Mr. Fitzgerald's motion, Mr. Libby testified that he was directed by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush to describe the uranium allegations to Ms. Miller of The Times as a "key judgment" of the National Intelligence Estimate. Citing intelligence as a "key judgment" in such estimates carries great weight with policy makers, because the reports are meant to highlight the most important and solid judgments of the government's intelligence agencies. "Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium," prosecutors wrote. In fact, the estimate's key judgments, which were officially declassified 10 days after Mr. Libby's meeting with Ms. Miller, say nothing about the uranium allegations. The key judgments on Iraq's nuclear program - namely, that Iraq was again trying to build a bomb - were based instead on other intelligence, like the assertion that Iraq was seeking high-strength aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. Ms. Miller authored no newspaper article about the leaked weapons information. In an interview with The Times in 2004, a senior intelligence official involved in drafting the estimate said the uranium allegations were excluded from the key judgments because the drafters knew there were serious doubts about their accuracy. As a result, the official said, the drafters cast the uranium allegations as a minor element in the overall assessment of Iraq's nuclear capabilities. The assertion that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium was mentioned on the bottom of Page 24 of the 90-page document. The drafters also noted, in an annex attached to the end of the document, that State Department intelligence officials considered the uranium allegation "highly dubious." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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