Michael Ledeen, The Nature of the Enemy, NRO
Michael Ledeen National Review Online July 26, 2004, 12:24 p.m. The Nature of the Enemy Win first. Hearts and minds will come. All of a sudden everybody's asking, Who are we fighting anyway? It's an interesting question, but it's not nearly as important as many of the debaters believe. The 9/11 Commission tells us we're fighting Islamists, or Islamist terrorists, and David Brooks has cooed over this, because he likes the notion that we're fighting an ideology. The White House has devoted lots of man-hours to this matter, trying to figure out how we win the battle of ideas, and the Internet is full of people who argue, variously, that we're fighting radical Islam, Saddam's die-hards, foreign fighters, or even Islam itself. All of these Islamic definitions guide us back to Samuel Huntington's thesis that there is a war - or at least a clash - of civilizations underway. Most share the conviction that we're fighting something that is unusually dangerous because not a traditional enemy, that is to say, a state. It's much more than that, or so they believe. I wonder. An awful lot of our enemies' ideology comes from us, as several scholars - Bernard Lewis and Amir Taheri, for starters - have stressed. The virulent anti-Semitism at the core of the (Sunni and Shiite) jihadists is right out of the Fuhrer's old playbook, which helps understand why jihad and the revival of anti-Semitism in Europe are running along in tandem. Sure, there's ample xenophobia in Islam, and Bat Yeor's fine work on dhimmitude abundantly documents the Muslim drive to dominate the infidel. But the kind of anti-Semitism - hardly distinguishable from anti-Americanism nowadays - that we find in Middle Eastern gutters has a Western trademark. It started in France in the 19th century, got a pseudoscientific gloss from the Austrians and Germans a generation later, and spread like topsy. Notice, please, that many scholars at the time insisted that Nazism was first and foremost an ideology, not a state. Indeed, Hitler was at pains to proclaim that he was fighting for an Aryan reich, not a German state. And if you read some of the literature on Nazism or for that matter the broader work on totalitarianism produced by the greatest generation, you'll find a profound preoccupation with winning the war of ideas against fascism. Indeed, a good deal of money and energy was expended by our armed forces, during and after the war, to de-Nazify and de-fascify the Old World. But the important thing is that when we smashed Hitler, Nazi ideology died along with him, and fell into the same bunker. The same debate over whom or what are we fighting raged during the Cold War, when we endlessly pondered whether we were fighting Communist ideology or Russian imperialism. Some - mostly intellectuals, many of them in the CIA - saw the Cold War primarily in ideological terms, and thought we would win if and only if we wooed the world's masses from the Communist dream. Others warned that this was an illusion, and that we'd better tend to containment else the Red Army would bring us and our allies to our knees. In the end, when the Soviet Empire fell, the appeal of Communism was mortally wounded, at least for a generation. You see where I'm going, surely. The debate is a trap, because it diverts our attention and our energies from the main thing, which is winning the war. It's an intellectual amusement, and it gets in our way. As that great Machiavellian Vince Lombardi reminds us, winning is the only thing. That's why the public figure who has best understood the nature of the war, and has best defined our enemy, is George W. Bush. Of all people! He had it right from the start: We have been attacked by many terrorist groups and many countries that support the terrorists. It makes no sense to distinguish between them, and so we will not. We're going after them all. Yes, I know he seems to lose his bearings from time to time, especially when the deep thinkers and the sheikhs and the Europeans and Kofi Annan and John Paul II insist we can't win the hearts and minds of the Middle East unless we first solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. But he has repeatedly pulled himself out of that trap very nicely, and he invariably does so in terms that show he has a uniquely deep understanding of our enemies. He says the way to win the war is to liberate the Middle East from the tyrants who now govern it and sponsor terrorism. And that's exactly right. There are plenty of terrorists out there who aren't Islamists. (There are even some suicide terrorists who have been forced into it; Coalition commanders are reporting the discovery of hands chained to steering wheels in suicide vehicles.) But all the terror masters are tyrants. Saddam didn't have any religious standing, nor do the Assads, but they are in the front rank of the terror masters. Ergo: Defeat the tyrants, win the war. And then historians can study the failed ideology. Machiavelli, Chapter Two: If you are victorious,
Jim Hoagland: 9/11 Commission, Little Help Going Forward
Both reports find that the United States faces a severe threat from global terrorist networks -- and does not have an intelligence organization capable of providing the clear-cut, unequivocal intelligence on the threat that any leader would want in making a mass life-or-death decision. Washington Post Little Help Going Forward By Jim Hoagland July 29, 2004 History professors should give the Sept. 11 commission's final report a solid A as an illuminating chronology pulled together on the gallop. History itself is not likely to be as kind. The report has conceptual holes and works too hard to round off the necessary rough edges of politics and national strategy. The commission investigating the 2001 terrorist assault on New York and the Pentagon follows the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in pinpointing causes for the woeful performance of the CIA and other government agencies in fighting al Qaeda and other enemies. It also suggests organizational fixes for what it christens the war on Islamist terrorism. But both these inquiries step gingerly around a central question that John Kerry is also likely to handle delicately when he addresses antiwar Democrats assembled in Boston tonight. It is the role -- if any -- that preemptive strikes or preventive war should play in protecting the United States from terrorist groups that possess or seek chemical, biological or radiological weapons. Indulging a blue-ribbon panel's instinctual penchant for the obvious, the commission mandates future administrations to attack terrorists and their organizations and permit them no sanctuaries. It adds: [T]he U.S. government must build the capacities to prevent a 9/11-scale plot from succeeding. Those conclusions make sense in a report that dwells heavily and persuasively on the failures of the Clinton and Bush administrations to take effective (i.e., preemptive) action to thwart the Sept. 11 plot as it was being refined in the caves of Afghanistan. But the commissioners are then mostly silent on getting there from here; that is, on specific measures to accomplish those particular goals. They are totally silent on preventive war, a concept that is enshrined in the Bush administration's National Security Strategy. Commission member Jamie Gorelick told Post editors and reporters that the doctrine and practices of preemption were deliberately kept out of the commission's closed-door discussions in a successful bid to avoid partisan arguments. The description of private harmony from Democrat Gorelick and Republican Slade Gorton stood in contrast to the knife-between-clenched-teeth approach of many commission members during the public sessions I watched. Might it have been better if the commissioners had argued out the big questions of the principles and tactics of national security in private and sought common ground there? I happen to think so. But the larger point that is ducked by the Senate and commission reports comes from an unwillingness to look directly at the consequences that flow from their two most important findings. Both reports find that the United States faces a severe threat from global terrorist networks -- and does not have an intelligence organization capable of providing the clear-cut, unequivocal intelligence on the threat that any leader would want in making a mass life-or-death decision. The reports are nonetheless useful debunking tools. They puncture the exaggerated claims that the intelligence failures on Sept. 11 and Iraq were a result of political manipulation and pressure by either the Clinton or Bush White Houses, or by Iraqi exiles. The true culprits were group think and other forms of faulty reporting and analysis by the agencies themselves on Iraq, and our government's appalling inability to internally share and track information on al Qaeda before Sept. 11. But having diagrammed the past with lucidity and skill, the Sept. 11 commission cast surprisingly little useful light on the future. Its call for a national intelligence director to overhaul the mess -- enthusiastically backed by Kerry and gaining favor with the White House -- could actually make things worse. Having one policymaker oversee both intelligence operations and analysis at the Cabinet level would mingle and corrupt both functions even more thoroughly than did the ascension of then-CIA Director George Tenet to President Bush's buddy, analyst in chief and an important if hidden voice on policy. The dangers to civil liberties from an intelligence czar have been pointed out more clearly in recent days by contrarian conservative columnist William Safire than by Democratic liberals in Boston. Bush's continuing defense of preemption -- see his July 12 speech on Iraq -- and the Democrats' equivocation in their platform, which condemns unilateral preemption but not any other kind, both skirt a more complex reality that an experienced national political leader expressed to me recently: Most of the time you are not
Claudia Rosett, Oil-for-Food and UBL's Money Iraq News note
NB: In the same period that Osama bin Ladin was issuing threats against the US, starting with his February 1998 fatwa and culminating in the August 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa, Iraq issued similar threats, demanding a lifting of sanctions. The Iraqi threats culminated August 5 in suspension day--the suspension of weapons inspections. Two days later, the near simultaneous bombings of the two US embassies occurred. The Weekly Standard An Oil-for-Food Connection? On whether any of Saddam's loot made its way into Osama's pockets. by Claudia Rosett August 9, 2004 IF, as the 9/11 Commission concludes, our failure of imagination left America open to the attacks of September 11, then surely some imagination is called for in tackling one of the riddles that stumped the commission: Where exactly did Osama bin Laden get the funding to set up shop in Afghanistan, reach around the globe, and strike the United States? So let's do some imagining. Unfashionable though it may be, let's even imagine a money trail that connects Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. By 1996, remember, bin Laden had been run out of Sudan, and seems to have been out of money. He needed a fresh bundle to rent Afghanistan from the Taliban, train recruits, expand al Qaeda's global network, and launch what eventually became the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile, over in Iraq about that same time, Saddam Hussein, after a lean stretch under United Nations sanctions, had just cut his Oil-for-Food deal with the U.N., and soon began exploiting that program to embezzle billions meant for relief. Both Saddam and bin Laden were, in their way, seasoned businessmen. Both had a taste for war. Both hated America. By the late 1990s, Saddam, despite continuing sanctions, was solidly back in business, socking away his purloined billions in secret accounts, but he had no way to attack the United States directly. Bin Laden needed millions to fund al Qaeda, which could then launch a direct strike on the United States. Whatever the differences between Saddam and bin Laden, their circumstances by the late 1990s had all the makings of a deal. Pocket change for Saddam, financial security for bin Laden, and satisfaction for both--death to Americans. Now let's talk facts. In 1996, Sudan kicked out bin Laden. He went to Afghanistan, arriving there pretty much bankrupt, according to the 9/11 Commission report. His family inheritance was gone, his allowance had been cut off, and Sudan had confiscated his local assets. Yet, just two years later, bin Laden was back on his feet, feeling strong enough to issue a public declaration of war on America. In February 1998, in a London-based Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, he published his infamous fatwa exhorting Muslims to kill the Americans and plunder their money. Six months later, in August 1998, al Qaeda finally went ahead with its long-planned bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden was back in the saddle, and over the next three years he shaped al Qaeda into the global monster that finally struck on American soil. His total costs, by the estimates of the 9/11 Commission report, ran to tens of millions of dollars. Even for a terrorist beloved of extremist donors, that's a pretty good chunk of change. The commission report says bin Laden got his money from sources such as a core group of financial facilitators in the Gulf states, especially corrupt charities. But the report concludes: To date, we have not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attack. Al Qaeda had many sources of funding and a pre-9/11 annual budget estimated at $30 million. If a particular source of funds had dried up, al Qaeda could easily have found enough money elsewhere to fund the attack. Elsewhere? One obvious elsewhere that no one seems to have seriously considered was Saddam's secret geyser of money, gushing from the so-called Oil-for-Food program. That possibility is not discussed in the 9/11 report, and apparently it was not included in the investigation. A 9/11 Commission spokesman confirms that the commission did not request Oil-for-Food documentation from the U.N., and none was offered. Why look at Oil-for-Food? Well, let's review a little more history. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, the U.N. imposed sanctions, which remained in place until 2003, when the United States and its allies finally toppled Saddam. But in 1996, with the aim of providing for the people of Iraq while still containing Saddam, the U.N. began running its Oil-for-Food relief program for Iraq. Under terms agreed to by the U.N., Saddam got to sell oil to buy such humanitarian supplies as food and medicine, to be rationed to the Iraqi population. But the terms were hugely in Saddam's favor. The U.N. let Saddam choose his own business partners, kept the details of his deals confidential, and while watching for weapons-related goods did not, as it turns out, exercise much serious financial oversight. Saddam turned this
Chalabi: All the reports about Foreign Extremists are Nonsense. They are only a small part of it. AFP
Chalabi said current resistance in the country was led by clandestine Baathists: All the reports about foreign extremists are nonsense, he said: They are only a small part of it. Agence France Presse July 31, 2004 US Iraq security plan a disaster: Chalabi DATELINE: MADRID Ahmed Chalabi, head of Iraq's National Congress Party and an erstwhile protege of the Pentagon in Washington, said Saturday the American security plan for his country was a disaster. The first thing that must be done is to abandon this plan which aims to reintegrate the Baathists (the former ruling party of Saddam Hussein), Chalabi said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais. These people will never fall into line with the government, on the contrary they will have a yet greater capacity to perform acts of terror and sabotage, he warned of the Baathists. The United States security plan in Iraq is a disaster, he was quoted as saying. Chalabi was a protege of Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon hawks, but fell into disfavour in Washington. It was reported that senior US officials had alleged he was passing classified US intelligence to Iran. Chalabi and his party were also accused of providing false information on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction ahead of last year's invasion of Iraq. In his interview, Chalabi said the American plan also ruled out the participation in security issues of Iraqi opposition forces that had fought against Saddam. It would also encourage the espionage services of neighbouring countries friendly with Washington, he added. Chalabi said current resistance in the country was led by clandestine Baathists: All the reports about foreign extremists are nonsense, he said: They are only a small part of it. The Baath Party is a secret society, he continued: Saddam Hussein provided them with a billion dollars and all sorts of weapons and explosives. The Baathists had an infrastructure and received money from those in the Gulf area who opposed dmeocracy in Iraq. Despite the Iraqi government's demand that the insurgents lay down their weapons, there would be no disarmament as long as the executive was unable to defend the Iraqi people, Chalabi said.
FJ Bing West, The Iraq Insurgency, WSJ, Iraq News note
NB: This account of the Iraqi insurgency, by an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, with its focus on the Sunni tribes, differs from Ahmad Chalabi's (AFP, Jul 31) account, with its emphasis on the Ba'athists. However, they concur on a key point: the core of the insurgency is not foreign jihadis. Iraqification, Part II By F.J. Bing West August 2, 2004 The Wall Street Journal RAMADI, Iraq -- In this Sunni city, a provincial capital 60 miles west of Baghdad, a Marine battalion fought yet another episodic battle last week, killing a few dozen insurgents at a cost of four wounded. In five months, the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment has engaged in over 200 firefights, absorbing close to 300 casualties while killing over 1,000 guerrillas. The battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Paul Kennedy, is the most battle-seasoned American unit in Iraq. But in the danger and the style of the combat, it is not atypical. The battalion fights alone, as do most American units. Iraqi government forces are absent from the field of their battle. And that is the heart of the problem. Stultified by 30 years of tyranny, Iraqis practice the politics of victimhood, complaining about others and bewailing their fate, while doing little to change it. They are not fighting for themselves. Sunni tribes north and west of Baghdad comprise the insurgency. In many Sunni cities, the insurgents mass at will and the people remain silent, either due to intimidation or commitment. In Ramadi, heavily armed Marines patrolling the marketplace receive sullen stares. Often they learn of a heavy attack when the machineguns open up. In nearby Fallujah, the Marines have agreed to not enter the city at all, ceding it to the insurgents. For 16 months now, the fight has been between the Americans and the insurgents. Iraqi security forces stand on the sidelines, usually proclaiming they will not kill a fellow Iraqi. While bombings have taken a toll among the security forces, offensive actions on their part are rare because they lack leaders. In the Sunni area, each city needs a competent police chief, a battalion leader and company commanders. In the American army, the sergeants are the glue of the structure. In contrast, in the Iraqi army, officers set the tone and the men follow obediently. U.S. advisers and combat commanders repeatedly pointed to a lack of leadership at the Iraqi company and battalion level. Because the insurgency is concentrated in a dozen cities, about 40 Iraqi battalions and 300 Iraqi leaders are needed to take on the insurgents. Captains and majors are needed out on the streets, not generals in Baghdad. That isn't a large number, but it has vexed the American military leadership for over a year. Now that Iraq is sovereign, the danger lies in rebuilding an army from the top down, filling officer slots with cronies seeking to benefit from rather than to sacrifice for the new Iraq. Because President Bush has promised to stay until successful, the weak can dictate the pace to the strong unless deadlines are set for turnover of local control. The key to local control is the willingness to go into battle and kill the other guy. The 700-man battalion is the logical force to back up the police in most cities. Lincoln selected his generals by performance, weeding out the failures after battles. That is the only course now for the Iraqi government, and for the U.S. This means insisting on deadlines and a joint -- not an Iraqi-only -- mechanism for swiftly firing those who refuse to fight or perform poorly. If the U.S. military cannot decisively influence the rapid replacement of incompetent leaders, American troops will carry the brunt of the fighting for years. The U.S. leverage to influence officer selection lies in equipment, money and advisers. We should tie equipping to a willingness to patrol and do battle. American political leaders should stand behind our military leaders and not undercut them when the Iraqis complain, as they surely will. American soldiers win every firefight, but they cannot beat the insurgency. Only the Iraqis can do that by wresting local control from their fellow Iraqis -- the insurgents. Because the insurgents have toughened over the past year, there will be bloody battles and some local defeats if Iraqi security forces challenge them. But without deadlines and competent Iraqi officers, we are consigned to whatever pace of turnover the Iraqis choose, and they have an incentive to let us do the fighting for them. Why do for yourself what the more powerful is willing to do for you? No one washes a rental car. Well, the Iraqis now own the car. So it is time for them to step forward here in Ramadi, and many other cities. --- Mr. West, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, is writing a book on the struggle for Fallujah.
Michael Rubin, The Assault on Chalabi, NRO
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE August 09, 2004 Arresting Iraqi DemocracyAn American appointee goes after peaceful politicians. On August 8, Iraqi judge Zuhair al-Maliky issued arrest warrants for Iraqi National Congress head Ahmad Chalabi and Salem Chalabi, a trilingual Yale graduate heading the special tribunal that is trying Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. Al-Maliky's actions have less to do with imposing justice than obstructing it. Most Iraqi judges dispute not only al-Maliky's credentials but also those of the Central Criminal Court over which he presides. The court is not Iraqi in its origins. Former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer created it by fiat on June 18, 2003. The head of Iraq's judicial union called the court unconstitutional and illegal. Most Iraqi judges consider it to be contrary to the Geneva Conventions; many Iraqis justices read several clauses in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to forbid changing unnecessarily the judicial system. AL-MALIKY'S RISEIn early 2004, Bush administration officials decided to transfer responsibility for Iraq to the United Nations. Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Blackwill directed a plan to take down Chalabi. He had his staff write a lengthy options paper entitled "Marginalizing Chalabi." Bremer laid the groundwork on April 22, when he revised his Order #13 to remove the requirement that appointees to the Central Criminal Court have five years judicial experience. With qualifications no longer an issue, Bremer appointed al-Maliky, a translator with no prior experience. He did meet one important qualification, however: He followed Bremer's orders. Less than a month later, al-Maliky proved his worth. He ordered a raid on Chalabi's compound, ostensibly to serve a warrant on a few Iraqi National Congress members. American civilians driving military Humvees and using military communications gear also participated in the raid. Camera crews, tipped off ahead of time by American officials, accompanied U.S. forces. Holding Chalabi at gunpoint, Iraqi officials quickly established that no one named on the warrant was present. OBSTRUCTING JUSTICEThe raid on Chalabi had little to do with justice. American civilians who accompanied Iraqi police used the opportunity to ransack Chalabi's compound, demanding oil-for-food documents. The oil-for-food investigation had become politically uncomfortable in Washington. But despite Bremer's frequent complaints about the Governing Council's ineffectiveness, the Iraqi government had been proactive in its investigation of U.N. corruption. Bremer and Blackwill feared that documentary evidence implicating senior U.N. officials might complicate the administration's desire to transfer responsibility for Iraq to the U.N., and as a result they sought to impede the investigation. Bremer dismissed the Governing Council's jurisdiction, and instead empowered his own handpicked Board of Supreme Audit. He then effectively froze the probe by demanding that the auditing firm's contract be re-bid multiple times. In doing so, Bush's national-security team subordinated Iraqis' interests to its own. From Washington's perspective, the raid on Chalabi's compound backfired. Not only did U.S. authorities not find any significant documents, but Chalabi's currency increased exponentially among Iraqis. Victimization is a political asset in the Shia world, and the smear campaign fell flat. Some journalists now realize they were used by intelligence contacts to play both Baghdad and Washington politics. No evidence has backed the charge that Chalabi passed information to the Iranians. Stories alleging polygraphs and investigations at the Pentagon were false, meant to sideline one sector in the policy debate. Since the transfer of sovereignty, Chalabi has remained engaged in Iraqi politics, and is a political thorn in Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's side. Not only has Chalabi rallied the opposition to re-Baathification, but he has also organized Iraqis for the national conference to select an interim national assembly. Allawi has opposed the national conference, telling his cabinet that he prefers regional conferences, which would not produce an interim body that might check his own power. Therein lays the timing of the latest charge. Al-Maliky told assembled journalists, "They [Ahmad and Salem Chalabi] should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial." Al-Maliky, Ayad Allawi, and some U.S. intelligence officials know well that even if the evidence fails to support the charge, Ahmad Chalabi will be knocked out of the national assembly and Salem Chalabi might be knocked off the war-crimes tribunal. And neither charge will hold up. As Ahmad Chalabi explained, "In my position as chairman of the Finance Committee of the Iraqi Governing Council, I
PBS NewsHour on Chalabis
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec04/iraq_08-09.html The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL August 9, 2004 [Excerpt] RAY SUAREZ: Now, an assessment of the latest moves by Prime Minister Allawi to assert control over the country. For that we're joined by Larry Diamond, a former political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from January to April this year, he's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Eric Davis, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, and author of Memories of State: Politics, History and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. . . . LARRY DIAMOND: Well, I think it's obvious the interest of the U.S. is in seeing him and his interim government succeed in building a viable state that has real authority, but at the same time one that-- one that respects the interim constitution which is a profoundly liberal document, which I might add, Salem Chalabi had a major role in drafting; and that does so in a way that is more or less respectful of the rules and principles of democracy. And I'm not saying Allawi has crossed the boundary toward autocracy yet, but it's tempting to do so if you are under the kinds of pressures that he is, and we need to be mindful of that. RAY SUAREZ: Well, you heard John Burns calling him someone who is becoming Iraq's hard man. How did you hear that? What did that mean to you? LARRY DIAMOND: Well, I think John perhaps, in his brilliant reporting, left it a bit deliberately ambiguous. But a hard man is necessary in order to establish order. And in order to face down a number of formidable challenges to the authority of the new Iraqi state of which I add one way or another, Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army are prominent among them and have to be dealt with. I think that Allawi was chosen precisely because he is tough, he's resolute, he's fearless and he's willing to use force to confront the enemies of a kind of decent and humane political order. But that has to be done in a way that is respectful of the rule of law. And I'm a little bit concerned about these indictments in terms of the possibility that they may imply the use of law as a political weapon. RAY SUAREZ: Professor Davis, do you think those indictments may carry that risk, that taint of politicization? ERIC DAVIS: Certainly. I've spoken today to a number of Iraqis and they have all expressed both confusion and concern with the arrest warrant that has been issued for Salem Chalabi. They've also pointed out that the individual in question who he is alleged to have conspired to murder, Haitham Fadil, a director general of the ministry of finance was engaged in an investigation apparently being carried out quite efficiently of improper use of the CPA of Iraqi government money. So if this is the case, there is obviously a lot more than meets the eye.
Allawi Evicts Rival Parties from their Offices, AFP
NB: Will this also apply to Allawi's own party, the Iraqi National Accord? Iraq PM gives Chalabi's party 24 hours to evacuate Baghdad HQ Agence France Press August 10, 2004 BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Tuesday gave the party of disgraced Pentagon favourite Ahmed Chalabi 24 hours to leave its Baghdad headquarters, the interior ministry said. Ministry spokesman Sabah Khadim insisted that eviction orders would follow against other parties which he said had seized state property after the fall of Saddam Hussein`s regime in April last year, but acknowledged that this was the first. "They will be returned to the ministries that owned the buildings before," he said. "This is the first one (and) this is the order of the prime minister." An official from Chalabi`s Iraqi National Congress party charged that the order was part of a continuing conspiracy against the group, after its leader was charged with banknote forgery late last week. "We were notified this afternoon that we must evacuate our Baghdad offices within 24 hours," said Mithal al-Alusi. "The order was signed by the Iraqi government and delivered to us by an American soldier. The conspiracy continues." Alusi said about 70 party members had gathered at the INC`s headquarters in Baghdad`s upscale Mansour neighbourhood to protest at the order. He said no US military or Iraqi security forces were outside the offices. The eviction order came one day after an Iraqi judge said Ahmed Chalabi and his nephew Salem would be arrested the moment they set foot back in their homeland to answer charges relating to money counterfeiting and murder respectively. The arrest warrants against the Chalabis were issued on Saturday by judge Zuhair al-Maliky of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, set up under the now dissolved US-led occupation authority.
Bush vs the Beltway--Paperback Release
For Immediate Release Contact: Lila Haber 212/207-7035 [EMAIL PROTECTED] BUSH VS THE BELTWAY: The Inside Battle Over War In Iraq By Laurie Mylroie "In face of the glibly-repeated slogan that America is'in search of enemies,' Laurie Mylroie shows that many in our intelligenceestablishment are fatally unable to recognize an enemy even when they meet one. A caustic and spirited statement of the original case for regime change." --Christopher Hitchens "This revealing and important book underscores the gravity of the threat that faced the country on 9/11and the trulyheroicnature of President Bush's decision to confront it, as well as the unbelievable (for many Americans) obstructionism of the bureaucracies. The phony furor over Iraq's weapons is merely the latest phasein the Washington bureaucratic war. Mylroiewants answers to hard questions--and so will you." --Richard Perle,former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy A key document in the ongoing policy debate...marshals a lot of persuasive evidence.Booklist Laurie Mylroies previous books on Iraq, The War Against America, and the #1 New York Times bestseller, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (co-authored with Judith Miller) made the persuasive case that Saddam Husseins regime had a long history of brutality and state sponsorship of terror. Now in her latest book, BUSH VS THE BELTWAY: The Inside Battle Over War in Iraq (ReganBooks; on-sale August 2004; Trade Paperback; $14.95) she takes on the story behind the buildup to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Combining groundbreaking new research with an insiders understanding of the workings of Washington, Mylroie describes how forces WITHIN the CIA and the State Department have conspired to falsely discredit crucial intelligence about Saddam Husseins regime, from his links to al Qaeda to his development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry. She charges the bureaucrats of these agencies with cynical, self-serving behavior, designed to help them save face even at the expense of our national security. Mylroie describes how major elements of the case against Iraqfrom new information about the al-Qaeda terrorists links to Iraq, to potential Iraq involvement in the fall 2001 anthrax attackswere suppressed or prematurely dismissed by the CIA and the State Department. She reveals how the very idea of state-sponsored terrorism had been pronounced dead after the 1993 World Trade Center bombingthereby giving states like Iraq the perfect cover to carry out well-orchestrated terrorist acts without ever being detected. In what will surely be seen as the controversial book of the decade, Mylroie asserts that: the peace and prosperity created by the Clinton administration was in essence an illusion during which our government failed to recognize and handle the growing threat of Iraqs arms build-up in the wake of the Gulf War, particularly its biological program. the concept of Islamic fanatical terrorist factions that are independent of any state backing is inaccurate and altogether false. all evidence points to a strong relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda operatives at a senior level, indicating that terrorist factions may, in fact, be a ruse to cover up Iraqs agenda. on the afternoon of September 11th, Donald Rumsfeld gave the order to start looking at Iraq, as well as al Qaeda, and that plans for war with Iraq were already in the making as we attacked Afghanistan. the CIA has time and time again used methods to divert the government from pursuing the al Qaeda-Iraq connection. the proposed centralization of intelligence may, in fact, be the worst scenario for keeping America alert to the deceptions of our enemies. BUSH VS THE BELTWAY presents astonishing facts that will lead readers to re-examine their own perceptions of the war and wonder what else we dont know. In the chapter Deception and Self-Deception, Mylroie recounts the military tactics of deception and denial used by the U.S. and Britain during World War II to illustrate how similar tactics may be in place to convince us that al Qaeda operatives are not linked to Iraq. This chapter alone will make readers want to brush up on historical military maneuvers in order to understand current politics. Together with Professor Robert Turner of the University of Virginia School of Law, who contributes an essay on the legality of the warshe demonstrates how only the unwavering vision of senior administration officials (President Bush first among them) broke through the roadblocks that stood in the way of liberating Iraq and defending America. In what may be called the most up-to-date book on Americas past history with Iraq and terrorism, Mylroie succeeds in connecting each seemingly unrelated event in a way the media, and perhaps even the go
Claudia Rosett, Oil For Food, Which Countries, Which Officials?, WSJ
Wall Street Journal THE REAL WORLD Strip Poker It's time for the U.N. to bare all and release its Oil-for-Food documents. BY CLAUDIA ROSETT Wednesday, August 11, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT A hallmark of the United Nations Oil-for-Food relief program in Iraq was secrecy, which served Saddam Hussein all too well. Since Oil-for-Food ended last November, its records have been handled with . . . yet more secrecy. And while I must confess to a certain relief that these remain largely locked up, thus excusing the press from any immediate responsibility to slog knee-deep through piles of old sanctions-busting Dear Uday documents, this secrecy does not serve the interests of the world public, nor is it a gift to anyone who would like to see the U.N. function as an honest institution. The problem at this stage is not a lack of investigations, there being at least nine of these now in motion, including the U.N.'s own inquiry into itself, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker--who now has the monopoly on the U.N.'s central hoard of Oil-for-Food records. But don't hold your breath waiting for results. At a press conference Monday, Mr. Volcker said that his Independent Inquiry Committee, which is looking into such matters as the Oil-for-Food payoffs, bribes, kickbacks, overcharges, undercharges, may not be ready to issue a report until the middle of next year. Meanwhile, with major policy being made right now, involving among other things, Iraq, the U.N., and the War on Terror, the U.N. stash remains confidential. So do the vast stores of Oil-for-Food documentation in Baghdad. All told, the reported inventory of paperwork is staggering. The U.N., according to Mr. Volcker, has upwards of 15 million documents related to Oil-for-Food, or about 10,000 boxes worth so far, with more expected to turn up. In Baghdad, where many government offices reportedly kept detailed records of various aspects of Saddam's deals, the Iraq Interim Government apparently has tons more Oil-for-Food related documents, the circumstances of which have been variously described by U.S. or Iraqi officials in recent months as frozen, locked down and gathered in one place--bringing to mind a sort of Yucca Mountain of toxic finance. One can only hope that wherever this giant data dump might be located, it is very carefully guarded against those with an interest either in destroying potentially damning information, or using it selectively and quietly to blackmail Saddam's former cronies, some of whom may still wield power on the world stage. And then, of course, there's the hoard of documents allegedly held by Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. Mr. Chalabi was one of the first to call for serious investigation of Oil-for-Food, based on what he has described as damning documents found in government offices in Baghdad, implicating senior officials of both the U.N. and various unnamed nations. Mr. Chalabi, according to his Washington-based adviser, Francis Brooke, recovered enough of Saddam's paperwork last year to fill three basketball courts chest-high. Of this hoard, says Mr. Brooke, some 20,000 pages relate directly to Oil-for-Food, most of them from the files of the Finance Ministry--which was just one of the many Iraqi ministries involved in this program. Since Mr. Chalabi first called for that investigation, the discrediting in some quarters of anything he has to say, including his charges about Oil-for-Food, has proceeded apace. In May, U.S. authorities raided his home and office. This week an Iraqi judge issued a warrant for Mr. Chalabi's arrest, on counterfeiting charges--an intriguing allegation in an environment where a considerable number of still un-arrested people appear to have been involved for years in the embezzlement of billions of entirely genuine dollars, hand-over-iron-fist. The effect, especially with all the secrecy surrounding the officially-held records of Oil-for-Food, has been to tie allegations about Oil-for-Food to whatever doubts now surround the rest of Mr. Chalabi's activities. In recent weeks, I have received notes suggesting that if Mr. Chalabi was the main source for the Oil-for-Food story, it may be time to rethink. Actually, it is time to reclarify. Mr. Chalabi, for this columnist, at any rate, was never a major source. Oil-for-Food was a program so vast, so obviously packed with perverse policies and incentives, and so disturbing to a number of honest people who encountered it--including some sources quite close to the U.N.--that the array of whistle-blowers is extensive and highly varied. The difficulty, over and over, has been to get at some of those umpteen zillion confidential documents, which might help substantiate exactly who did exactly what to produce the biggest aid scam in U.N. history. (Or, if you prefer, might perhaps clear Saddam's name by demonstrating that he was, after all, a much-maligned do-good kinda guy, trying his best to bring baby food to the people of Iraq).
Jim Hoagland, Strategic Failures in Iraq
Washington Post In Iraq, Strategic Failures By Jim Hoagland August 12, 2004 George W. Bush and John Kerry have been trading questions about their past views and actions on Iraq. Their campaign exchange is worse than pointless -- it is a distraction from the debate they should be having about Iraq's present and future. Such a debate might force Bush to recognize that he is losing his moral and pragmatic bearings in Iraq as his administration dilutes its commitment to democracy and the rule of law there. And it might force Kerry to spell out a clear, realistic alternative to the current miasma, if he has one. The candidates' obligations and options are not equal, of course. The president's decisions are not couched in the tactical subjunctive, as are Kerry's promises. Iraq, the United States and for that matter the rest of the world all live with the consequences of Bush's words -- if he sticks to them. Last fall the president gave three stirring speeches in which he vowed to end 60 years of reflexive American support for repression by Arab governments: Morality and pragmatism required Washington to support democracy in the region. Iraq would be the model. But Bush's priorities seem to be different today, as his administration engages in or condones cynical maneuvering designed not to create democracy in Baghdad but to create political cover at home and fear and turmoil in Tehran. Simultaneous U.S. military assaults on Shiite rebels in Najaf, a new and brutal power play in Baghdad against that ever troublesome Shiite politician Ahmed Chalabi, and the temporary suppression of critical news coverage by al-Jazeera satellite television this week have established the fact that stability of the Arab strongman kind is again tolerated at the White House. Long backed by the CIA, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is now supporting the U.S. intelligence agency's closely related campaigns to destroy Chalabi and use Iraq to subvert Iran's ruling Shiite ayatollahs. The agency is determined to protect its all-important liaison relationships with Sunni Arab governments in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which fear the Shiite majorities in Iran and Iraq. That is the decisive background to the appalling choice of priorities for the use of military and judicial power that Bush at least implicitly condones in Iraq. Baathist killers and Wahhabi terrorists go unarrested, unprosecuted and unchallenged in the streets of Fallujah, Ramadi and Sunni sections of Baghdad. At the same time the ragtag Shiite militia of Moqtada Sadr triggers an all-out U.S. assault in Najaf that risks damaging some of the holiest shrines of the Shiite branch of Islam, for small strategic gain. Sadr deserves no sympathy. U.S. miscalculation is almost entirely responsible for turning this insignificant demagogue into a rebel with a following. Shiites, who are still bitter and distrustful of the United States for its failure to support their uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, are likely to note the disparity of treatment of the Sunni and Shiite insurgencies, and to conclude that Shiite political will is the true target of the Najaf operation. The fact that Allawi is by heritage a Shiite will not reduce the sting of his approving the operation. An ex-Baathist, he has always made his career in Sunni-dominated power structures. The timing of the latest burst of specious charges and allegations against Chalabi, his nephew Salem and his political party also suggests, at a minimum, a highly selective use of limited resources. Chalabi, whom I have known and written about for 30 years, has made a large number of necessary and unnecessary enemies in his long campaign to bring down the Baathists and then to keep them from returning to power. Among the unnecessary and unforgiving enemies was L. Paul Bremer, Bush's proconsul in Baghdad during the formal U.S. occupation and a man quick to see a hidden Iranian hand in Iraq's problems. This past spring Bremer collaborated with Bush's National Security Council staff on a seven-page memorandum that outlined a strategy for marginalizing Chalabi. This exercise has now been relentlessly brought to fruition while arrests and prosecutions of insurgents have gone unpursued. Bremer created a secret court, appointed a manifestly unprepared jurist to head it and made sure Iraq's interim government could not disband it after the U.S. administrator left. It is this judge, Zuhair Maliky, who issued a warrant for the arrest of Chalabi while he was -- guess where? -- in Tehran. Chalabi's fight with other Iraqi factions in Baghdad is his business. But the Bush team petulantly stakes American prestige, credibility and honor on a covert campaign of score-settling against Chalabi, Sadr and any other Shiites who might be influenced by Iran, while terrorists reign in Fallujah. This is not strategy; this is folly. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
NY Sun, The Goss Nomination
The New York Sun Editorial The Goss Nomination August 12, 2004 President Bush's choice to be director of central intelligence, Rep. Porter Goss, a Republican of Florida who was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has shown precious little evidence so far of being the right man for the job. Some say that Mr. Goss, a former CIA officer, is too close to the CIA to perform the shake-up that the agency badly needs. He's part of a failed culture, the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen told our Luiza Savage. AEI's Reuel Marc Gerecht,who has been sounding the alarm about the CIA's failures since the publication of his 1997 book Know Thine Enemy,derides Mr.Goss as a water-carrier for the CIA. This isn't criticism coming from the anti-CIA hard left, but from men who understand that America is in a war in which a capable CIA with strong intelligence-gathering and analytic capabilities could be a formidable asset. Mr. Goss's worst policy error was to deride the Iraqi National Congress and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi. Had America listened to Mr. Chalabi's advice about the importance of Iraqi participation in the liberation of Iraq and the need for postwar planning, the current difficulties for American troops in Iraq could have been avoided. But Mr. Goss disparaged Iraqis who risked their lives to fight Saddam. It's unspeakable to me that we would be putting any money in the pockets of expatriates who are talking about revolution in the comfortable capitals of Western Europe. Every time you do that, all the bootmakers and suit-makers in London just cheer, Mr. Goss told USA Today in 1999. Amid the anonymous and so far unproven smears this spring of Mr. Chalabi as a leaker of American secrets to the Iranians, Mr. Goss declined to defend the Iraqi patriot, telling USA Today, I have been accurate in my assessment of Chalabi over the years. The thing I admire most about him is his tailor. This isn't merely about Mr. Chalabi but a whole CIA culture that derided Shiite Muslims and democrats and took information provided by non-democratic, Sunni American friends in Jordan or Saudi Arabia as gospel. As chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mr. Goss was in charge of congressional oversight of the intelligence community. The report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States concluded that the oversight was largely a failure. Mr. Goss's signal achievement on the personnel management front was hiring a chief of staff for the House intelligence committee who wound up a sordid suicide. Recently, and conveniently, Mr. Goss has refashioned himself as one of the CIA's harshest critics. His committee's most recent intelligence authorization report includes a scathing critique of the agency's human intelligence collection efforts. For too long the CIA has been ignoring its core mission activities.There is a dysfunctional denial of any need for corrective action, reads the report. After years of trying to convince, suggest, urge, entice, cajole, and pressure CIA to make wide-reaching changes to the way it conducts its HUMINT mission, however, CIA, in the Committee's view, continues down a road leading over a proverbial cliff. If he's to have any chance of success in the director's job, he will have to keep in mind the need for corrective action -- both at the agency and in the course he himself has chosen.
Salem Chalabi Explains Situation, Wash Times
The judge, Zuhair al-Maliky, graduated as a lawyer three years ago, and was promoted to a senior judicial investigator after active lobbying by an American member of the occupation administration led by Paul Bremer, legal analysts in Baghdad said. The leap from student to junior investigative judge to the country's senior investigative judge has amazed the Iraqi legal profession, including numerous Iraqi lawyers who have returned to Iraq since Saddam's ouster. The Washington Times August 13, 2004 Chalabi pressed for 'show trial' By Paul Martin LONDON - Salem Chalabi, the Iraqi lawyer running the special tribunal charged with trying Saddam Hussein, claimed yesterday that some Iraqi government officials were seeking a show trial and quick execution of the ousted dictator. Murder charges filed against him this week were brought by persons who object to his meticulous and rights-driven approach to Saddam's trial, Mr. Chalabi said in an interview. Senior Iraqi officials have been trying to pressurize me to do things differently, he said at his elegant London apartment in the upscale Sloane Square district. Ministers have told me they want Saddam dead as a way to break the hopes of the Sunni insurgents and dampen down the violence, he said. He added that a very senior minister - not the prime minister himself had told him that the tribunal must not allow Saddam and his men to use their hearings as a stage to put on trial the current ministers, not the old regime. They feel that allowing an independent, fair trial to move forward with its own dynamic at its own pace may not merge well with the political scene, he said. The country's chief investigative judge issued arrest warrants on Sunday for Mr. Chalabi and his uncle, Ahmed Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite who stands accused of possessing counterfeit Iraqi dinars. Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress - a multiethnic grouping of former Iraqi exiles - returned from a visit to Iran on Wednesday to face the charges. A secular member of the majority but previously repressed Shi'ite community, Mr. Chalabi has taken shelter in northern Iraq. There, he is under the protection of one of the two main Kurdish leaders, Jalal Talabani, The Washington Times has learned. The Iraqi government announced yesterday it was suspending any prosecution of the charges against Ahmed Chalabi pending further investigations. There was and there is now no intention to carry out any measure in this regard until finalizing the legal measures, Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said. In the London interview, Salem Chalabi sought to throw doubt on the motives and qualifications of the judge who issued the arrest warrants. The judge, Zuhair al-Maliky, graduated as a lawyer three years ago, and was promoted to a senior judicial investigator after active lobbying by an American member of the occupation administration led by Paul Bremer, legal analysts in Baghdad said. The leap from student to junior investigative judge to the country's senior investigative judge has amazed the Iraqi legal profession, including numerous Iraqi lawyers who have returned to Iraq since Saddam's ouster. I think he may want to leapfrog himself to prominence, and to have his own criminal court take over the prosecution of the former Iraqi regime figures, Mr. Chalabi suggested.
Iraqi Police Fire on Journalists, Daily Telegraph
(see URL below for DT editorial on this issue) Daily Telegraph Police fire at reporters as US tanks roll up to shrine By Adrian Blomfield in Najaf August 16, 2004 The bullet that whistled through the lobby of the Sea Hotel in Najaf yesterday, embedding shards of glass into a foreign reporter's cheek before lodging itself in an air-conditioning unit, carried an unmistakeable message: Get out. Journalists working in Iraq have long lived with the danger of being targeted by insurgents fighting US-led forces and their Iraqi allies. But in Najaf the roles have been abruptly reversed. Now the Iraqi police threaten journalists, and the insurgents welcome them. As US marines and Iraqi security forces resumed their operation to evict insurgents from the Shrine of Ali, the holiest place in Shia Islam, the Iraqi interim government decided yesterday to treat the media as the enemy. The authoritarian stance towards the press seems redolent of the days of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government has closed the offices of al-Jazeera, the most important Arab satellite station, accusing it of inciting the insurgents. In Najaf journalists were summoned yesterday morning by the city's police chief, Ghalab al-Jazeera. It was said that he wanted to parade some captured members of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, who have launched their second uprising in four months. Instead the police chief delivered a blunt warning: journalists had two hours to leave Najaf or face arrest. Mr Jazeera's official explanation for the decision was that police guarding the hotel had found 550 lbof dynamite in a car nearby. That seems unlikely. The police rarely venture out of their stations and the street outside the hotel is almost always deserted. Mr Jazeera's expressions of concern were quickly followed by a thinly veiled attack on the foreign press. We know you are neutral journalists despite the fact you did not report the bad actions by Sadr's people when they beheaded and burned innocent people and the Iraqi police, he said. For good measure, Mr Jazeera also threatened to arrest Iraqi drivers and translators working for the press corps if we did not comply. The 30-odd journalists staying at the Sea Hotel decided to stay in Najaf. Shortly after the deadline expired, the first bullets struck the building. But the sniper was almost certainly an Iraqi policeman, given that the Mahdi army fighters were more than two miles away. Then armed police raided the hotel and tried to arrest the journalists, before imposing a new two-hour deadline to leave the city. A deputation of journalists was denied an audience with Najaf's governor, Adnan al-Zurufi. The policeman outside his office was brusque. If you do not leave by the deadline we will shoot you, he said. That was enough for all but a handful of British and American journalists who hunkered down in the hotel as the deadline expired. As night fell, shots were fired at the roof of the hotel, from where reporters file their stories. Sadr's fighters are more press-friendly. The cleric's aides frequently drop into the hotel to brief journalists, or take us to the shrine to meet Sadr or his spokesmen. In Basra, Sadr's lieutenants ordered the release of James Brandon, a reporter taken hostage by Mahdi army renegades on Thursday night. It was not hard to see why Iraq's interim government might prefer journalists out of the city. On Saturday, negotiations with Mahdi army militants holed up in the Imam Ali shrine broke down and a ceasefire was called off. The options facing the US marines and their Iraqi allies are grim. An offensive on the shrine, burial place of Imam Ali, cousin of the prophet Mohammed and inspiration for Shia Islam, is likely to push moderate Shias over to Sadr's side. America would prefer the fledgling Iraqi security services to carry out the attack, but they are poorly equipped and trained and unlikely to succeed. Gunfire sounded in Najaf all yesterday. By nightfall US tanks had moved to within a few hundred yards of the shrine. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/08/16/dl1602 .xmlsSheet=/news/2004/08/16/ixnewstop.html
NY Sun, Putin-ization of Iraq
Opposing a thorough investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, an investigation that might show Saddam funneled money from the program to neighboring tyrants. This issue is really over, he told Al Arabiya.We want to start a new life and forget about the past. We do not want to dig up and discuss the past problems. We as an Iraqi leadership and other leaders in the region need to forget the past. The New York Sun Editorial The Putin-ization of Iraq August 17, 2004 An American president named Bush once presided over American policy during the collapse of a foreign dictatorship and failed to capitalize on the opportunity. What eventually emerged in Russia was a regime, led by a former colonel in the Committee for State Security, Vladimir Putin, that was better than what came before it but that lacks respect for basics like freedom of religion or of the press. Today another American president named Bush seems to be on the road to a similar error in Iraq. The American-installed strongman in Baghdad, Ayad Allawi, is, like Mr.Putin,a veteran of an intelligence service that served a totalitarian state; in Iraq, it wasn't the KGB but the Mukhabarat. Mr. Allawi, like Mr. Putin, is cracking down on his political opponents, by engineering political prosecutions of leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, an Iraqi political party, and by evicting the INC from its Baghdad headquarters. Just as Mr.Putin never fully abandoned the authoritarian tactics of the Soviet communist party, so Mr. Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, has not abandoned the failed tactics and ideology of Baathist Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Some of Mr. Allawi's most egregious errors occurred late last month while the American press was preoccupied with Senator Kerry in Boston. Those errors include: -- Meeting, on July 24, with President Assad of Syria and pronouncing, according to an Associated Press dispatch from Damascus,It is clear that our visit here is the beginning of a bright chapter in relations between our two brotherly people. Mr. Assad, like his father before him, is the leader of Syria's Baath Party, the party of Saddam Hussein. Syria is on America's list of state sponsors of terrorism. -- Putting a higher priority on Iraq's relations with non-democratic countries than on its relations with America. Mr. Allawi visited not only Syria but Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait. When I received invitations from Europe and Washington, I apologetically told them I am part of this region and, consequently, I will first visit it, Mr. Allawi said in a July 26 interview in Beirut with Al Arabiya television, an English transcript of which was made available by the Federal News Service. -- Spurning Israel. Mr. Allawi insisted repeatedly, both at a Damascus press conference and in the Al Arabiya interview, There are no Israelis in Iraq. Asked whether he had lifted the Saddam-era ban on travel to Israel by Iraqis, Mr.Allawi responded that a change made to Iraqi passports was regrettably misinterpreted as an invitation to visit Israel and open an Israeli embassy in Baghdad. -- Opposing America's decision to dissolve Saddam Hussein's army, which was an important part of the Baathist regime. Mr. Allawi referred to the mistakes committed by dissolving the military and security establishments. -- Relying on non-democratic Arab regimes to supply Iraq's new army. I contacted our dear Arab leaders, I contacted President Mubarak, His Majesty King Abdallah, the leadership in the United Arab Emirates, and his majesty the king of Morocco.They all without exception sent us donations, he told Al Arabiya. -- Opposing a thorough investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, an investigation that might show Saddam funneled money from the program to neighboring tyrants. This issue is really over, he told Al Arabiya.We want to start a new life and forget about the past. We do not want to dig up and discuss the past problems. We as an Iraqi leadership and other leaders in the region need to forget the past. President Bush must know this can play well only among the opponents of his own leadership in the Battle of Iraq. He has landed a leader in Iraq who seems to want to cover up Saddam's crimes, maintain a hostile policy toward Israel, trifle with freedom of the press, harass his political opposition, and forge friendships with the dictators that Saddam's ouster was supposed to be a step on the way to toppling. It all runs counter to Mr. Bush's stated agenda. Yet in an interview on CNN's Larry King Live, Mr. Bush essentially endorsed the Iraqi prime minister, saying,We've got a great leader in Prime Minister Allawi. Norman Podhoretz, in his already-celebrated article in the September issue of Commentary, recalls how he and George Will criticized President Reagan in 1982 for his tepid response to the imposition of martial law in Poland. The East European dissidents, he said, were not so easily demoralized. They
Origin of Najaf Clashes?, NYT
New York Times LOOKING BACK 8-Day Battle for Najaf: From Attack to Stalemate By ALEX BERENSON and JOHN F. BURNS August 18, 2004 NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 17 - Just five days after they arrived here to take over from Army units that had encircled Najaf since an earlier confrontation in the spring, new Marine commanders decided to smash guerrillas loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Acting without the approval of the Pentagon or senior Iraqi officials, the Marine officers said in recent interviews, they turned a firefight with Mr. Sadr's forces on Thursday, Aug. 5, into a eight-day pitched battle, one fought out in deadly skirmishes in an ancient cemetery that brought them within rifle shot of the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine. Eventually, fresh Army units arrived from Baghdad and took over Marine positions near the mosque, but by then the politics of war had taken over and the American force had lost the opportunity to storm Mr. Sadr's fighters around the mosque. Now, what the Marines had hoped would be a quick, decisive action has bogged down into a stalemate that appears to have strengthened the hand of Mr. Sadr, whose stature rises each time he survives a confrontation with the American military. Just as seriously, it may have weakened the credibility of the interim Iraqi government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, showing him, many Iraqis say, to be alternately rash and indecisive, as well as ultimately beholden to American overrule on crucial military and political matters. As a reconstruction of the battle in Najaf shows, the sequence of events was strikingly reminiscent of the battle of Falluja in April. In both cases, newly arrived Marine units immediately confronted guerrillas in firefights that quickly escalated. And in both cases, the American military failed to achieve its strategic goals, pulling back after the political costs of the confrontation rose. Falluja is now essentially off-limits to American ground troops and has become a haven for Sunni Muslim insurgents and terrorists menacing Baghdad, American commanders say. The Najaf battle has also raised fresh questions about an age-old rivalry within the American military - between the no-holds-barred, press-ahead culture of the Marines and the slower, more reserved and often more politically cautious approach of the Army. Army-Marine tensions also have surfaced previously, notably when the Marines opened the Falluja offensive, only to be ordered to pull back. As they replay the first days of the Najaf battle, some commanders are wondering if a more carefully planned mission would have had a better chance to succeed. Setting conditions for an attack requires extensive planning and preparations, said Lt. Col. Myles Miyamasu, who commands an Army battalion that arrived to reinforce the Marine unit here two days after the fight began. If you don't have those things in place and you attack, a lot of times it fails. When the United States transferred power to the interim government in June, both American and Iraqi officials insisted that authority for major decisions on the use of force would be exercised by the new Iraqi leadership, in particular Dr. Allawi, a former enforcer for Saddam Hussein's Baath Party who defected in the 1980's and became leader of an exile political party. Senior United States military commanders emphasized that while they retained command of their troops, the forces were there to serve the Iraqi government. But in the battle in Najaf, at least, the marines here say they engaged Mr. Sadr's forces at the request of the local Iraqi police. They did not seek approval from senior military commanders or from Iraqi political leaders, with the exception of the governor of Najaf. The governor, Adnan al-Zurfi, an Allawi appointee, refuses to confirm having given the green light, although American commanders in Baghdad cited his commands repeatedly as the political cover for the Marine attack. In past week, the interim government has twice halted major American-led attacks on Mr. Sadr's forces as they were about to begin. It now says it will use Iraqi troops for future battles. But it is far from clear, judging from the lukewarm assessments of American commanders in Najaf, that the American-trained Iraqi units that fought alongside the Americans last week are capable of taking the lead in any showdown with Mr. Sadr. The seeds of the Najaf battle were sown on July 31, when the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, commanded by Col. Anthony M. Haslam, replaced units of the Army's First Armored Division and First Infantry Division, which had fought Mr. Sadr's militiamen for weeks in the spring before a series of truces around Najaf. The marines began to skirmish with the Iraqi fighters almost as soon as they took responsibility for this holy city of 500,000, American officers and Mr. Sadr's militiamen say. Senior officers in Baghdad, as well White House officials who discussed the battle in Washington, say
Michael Rubin, Losing the Shia, NRO
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE August 19, 2004.Losing the ShiaIraqi Shia see a U.S. betrayal, and frankly, they should. By Michael Rubin Any semblance of a ceasefire evaporated today as fierce fighting erupted around the Shrine of Imam Ali, Shii Islam's holiest site. Even if Iraqi forces lead the charge into the Shrine of Imam Ali, Iraqi Shia will blame the U.S. for any damage. Even if a peaceful solution is found, the U.S. will have lost out. It didn't have to be this way. Sadr was not initially popular among Iraqi Shia. Many Iraqis consider him responsible for the April 10, 2003 murder of Shia cleric Majid al-Khoei. Many Iraqi Shia ridiculed Sadr's October 10, 2003 declaration of a parallel government with himself as president. In both Sadr City and in Najaf, local residents resented the abuse and the arrogance of Sadr's Brown Shirts. When I attended a meeting of Najaf notables in February 2004, their major complaint was the Coalition's failure to rein in Muqtada's gangs. As recently as May 2004, vigilantes in Najaf took to assassinating Muqtada's followers. Sadr's initial support hemorrhaged when the young cleric failed to deliver on promises. In Iraq, money talks and initially Sadr had little. But, thanks to Iran, that changed. The evidence is overwhelming. Even the State Department now acknowledges Iran's financial support for Sadr's Mahdi army. The only figures who today deny Iranian material support for Sadr are academics and pundits who have neither been to Iraq since its liberation nor bothered to conduct field research. Simple translation of Arabic articles provides as much informed comment as al-Jazeera.Sadr launched his uprising in April 2004. His resort to violence had much to do with his failure to build a constituency through legitimate political activity. Former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer can be faulted with many mistakes, but unwillingness to take on Sadr was not among them. Indeed, had the National Security Council listened to Bremer's advice, Coalition forces would have arrested Sadr long before he could organize his well-planned, well-coordinated April uprising. BLACKWILL BLOWBACKWith little demonstrable public support, al-Sadr's April uprising fizzled out. But, four months later, resistance remains fierce. What's changed has less to do with Sadr than with blowback from ill-advised and poorly thought-out strategy. In October 2003, the White House launched a major reorganization of its Iraq-policy team. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice became titular head of the Iraq Stabilization Group, but her deputy (and former mentor) Robert Blackwill, who is well known for his slash-and-burn management style, became chief for political transition. His influence on Iraq policy was quickly felt in both Baghdad and in Washington. There was surprise in both Baghdad and Washington when, on November 11, 2003, Bremer missed a planned meeting with the Polish prime minister to return to Washington. The reason for the hasty departure became apparent within days, when Bremer announced a date for the return of Iraq's sovereignty. The impetus for the transfer did not come from Baghdad but from the National Security Council, which had, ironically, overruled in February 2003 Pentagon plans for an immediate transfer of sovereignty upon liberation. The transfer of sovereignty was long overdue. But other policies implemented in the wake of Blackwill's accession have severely eroded Iraqi trust in the United States. Demography is important: Arab Shia are the majority in Iraq. Kurds account for nearly a quarter of the population. Ten percent of the Kurdish population, and perhaps half the Turkmen population, are Shia as well. Only 15 to 20 percent of the population is Arab Sunni. Whereas President Bush repeatedly promised that the U.S. sought democracy in Iraq, the British government, U.S. State Department, and the National Security Council project the opposite to an Iraqi audience. Iraqis were not blind to high-level discussions of a "Sunni strategy." They interpreted the Sunni strategy to mean that Washington would not live up to its rhetoric of democracy, and instead return the Sunni minority to what many former Baathists--and the Saudi and Jordanian governments--felt was the Sunni community's birthright. They saw British officials divert money from reconstruction in Kirkuk to projects in Hawija, a violent Arab Sunni town about an hour's drive away. The State Department's Iraq coordinator made little secret of his desire to implement a far-reaching Sunni strategy. Iraqis interpreted Bremer's decision to televise his April 23 speech announcing a rollback of de-Baathification as proof that Washington was pandering to Iraq's Sunni population. "He insists the policy wasn't changed, but why else would he televise the announcement?" an Iraqi asked me the following day. The reversal may have had less to do with
Daily Star: Hizbullah al-Qaeda: Friends or Foes?
Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda: Friends or foes? By Haytham Mouzahem Special to The Daily Star (Lebanon) Friday, August 20, 2004 The final report of the Sept. 11 Commission in the US argued that Al-Qaeda had ties with Iran and Hizbullah, but it also concluded there was no collaboration between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, one of President George W. Bush's central arguments in favor of launching an invasion of Iraq last year. The report noted that the relationship between Al-Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shiite divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations. But the report also found no evidence that Iran or Hizbullah was aware of the planning for what later became the Sept.11 attack. It is true that Sunni-Shiite differences are in no way obstacles to cooperation between Islamist groups such as the Shiite Hizbullah and Palestinian Islamist movements such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. But the Sept. 11 Commission did not observe that Al-Qaeda was a very different Sunni group than the Palestinian ones; it is an extremist Wahhabi movement that considers Shiites nonbelievers, referring to them as rafidha, or those who reject mainstream Islam. In 1998, the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, which was harboring Al-Qaeda and its leadership, committed atrocities against Afghan Shiite Hazaras in Mazar al-Sharif, killing thousands, as well as eight Iranian diplomats. The crimes very nearly led to a war between Iran and Afghanistan, and helped explain Iranian support for the northern Afghani groups in their battle against the Taleban and Al-Qaeda - and later (if more circumspectly) for the US invasion that led to the Taleban's overthrow The relation between the Iraq's Baath regime and Al-Qaeda began in 1998, when Saddam Hussein allowed the group to establish training camps in Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was reportedly the broker of this connection. The alliance may have resurfaced after the US invasion through the unexpected cooperation between the two parties in attacking coalition forces, Iraqi policemen and civilians and Shiite leaders and holy shrines. The tight organization and apparent logistical network behind the Al-Qaeda suicide operations suggest there may have been preparation for those attacks with the Baath regime, which provided Al-Qaeda with organizational and intelligence assistance as well as money and maybe combatants. It was bizarre indeed that Al-Qaeda and Saddam's followers should have focused their attacks so strongly against Shiite religious and political leaders and cadres, and against their holy shrines in Najaf and Karbala, as well as the Qazimiyyeh Mosque in Baghdad, killing thousands of civilians, instead of focusing on targeting the occupation forces. That strongly implied both a deep a hatred for the Shiites and a desire to prevent them of playing any major role in post-war Iraq. Wahhabis consider the Shiites unbelievers (kuffar) and polytheists (mushrekin) because of their veneration of the prophet and the imams. Since the late 18th century, the Wahhabis launched three military campaigns to conquer Shiite regions in Arabia, leading to the destruction of their mosques and shrines. In 1803 and 1806, the Wahhabis entered Iraq and sacked the tombs of Imam Hussein in Karbala, an act of incredible desecration. In 1927, senior Saudi religious scholars issued fatwas condemning the Shiites, and these were reasserted as late as the 1990s. Given all this, Hizbullah cannot be indifferent toward the terrorist and sectarian attacks against their Iraqi brethren and their shrines. The party's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, condemned these killings and warned Al-Qaeda fighters last March that such behavior would damage the Palestinian cause because it would lead to Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife, an apparent goal of Zarqawi's as it appeared in a letter he is said to have addressed to Osama bin Laden seized by US forces. In an interview with Middle East scholar Asaad Abu Khalil in June 2004, Nasrallah expressed strong fears and concerns about the so-called resistance in Iraq, and strongly condemned its methods, for example the use of car bombings. As he put it, they are willing to kill 90 Iraqi civilians in order to kill one US soldier. Nasrallah asserted, the Wahhabi network is very active in Iraq, and it has a strong sectarian agenda. He said he believed that Saddam's Baathists and even Wahhabis are willing to negotiate with the Americans all in order to prevent a rise in Shiite power. He worried that this Wahhabi network will strike at Shiite targets in the Arab world, outside Iraq, very soon. Hizbullah has condemned attacks targeting civilians by Al-Qaeda and its allies. Nawaf Musawi, who is in charge of Hizbullah's international relations department, said in an interview that his first comment following the Sept. 11 attacks was this is (Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon's lucky day, because Sharon would be able to kill the Palestinian people under
Chicago Man Charged as Iraqi Spy, Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune U.S. says man was Iraqi spy Arrest is made in Des Plaines By Glenn Jeffers, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporters Amanda Vogt and Michael Higgins contributed to this report August 31, 2004 Federal authorities arrested a Des Plaines man Monday, saying he entered the country as a sleeper spy for the Iraqi intelligence service and charging him with lying on his U.S. citizenship application to conceal his role. After the arrest of Sami Khoshaba Latchin, 57, prosecutors said he became a naturalized citizen after making false statements to immigration officials in 1999 and planned to lay low until contacted by his Iraqi handler. Latchin entered a not guilty plea at a hearing Monday. According to a federal indictment returned July 21 and unsealed Monday, Latchin worked for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, known as the Mukhabbarat, the foreign intelligence arm of the Iraqi government. The indictment said that in addition to failing to disclose his ties to Iraqi intelligence, Latchin, a Baath party member, lied about overseas trips he made in 1994, 1996 and 1997. Latchin, who was born in Dohuk, Iraq, and has lived in the United States for nearly 11 years, told authorities he was traveling on vacation when, in fact, he met with his Iraqi intelligence handler and received payment for his services, the indictment alleges. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer remanded Latchin to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago pending a detention hearing Sept. 7. Federal defender Mary Judge, Latchin's attorney, said Monday she would fight her client's detention but declined to comment further. At a news conference after the hearing, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald stressed that authorities were charging Latchin only with making false statements. Latchin was ordered basically to come to this country and lay low as a sleeper, Fitzgerald said. Anyone who comes to live in the United States and lies about their membership in the intelligence service of a hostile foreign government must realize that . . . the government will bring appropriate charges. If convicted of making false statements, Latchin faces 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines, federal prosecutors said. Fitzgerald also said prosecutors would seek to have Latchin's citizenship revoked. Fitzgerald downplayed the timing of the arrest, which came more than six weeks after a federal grand jury returned the indictment of Latchin. Fitzgerald would not comment on the delay. We thought it was important to wait, but it's important that we now move forward, he said. Fitzgerald said authorities learned of Latchin's alleged involvement with the Mukhabbarat 1 1/2 years ago while reviewing FBI intelligence. Neighbors said Monday that federal agents arrested Latchin at his third-story condominium in the 9300 block of Bay Colony Drive in Des Plaines around 6 a.m. A relative at Latchin's home declined to comment. Dressed in an olive-green button-down shirt and black slacks, Latchin arrived at Pallmeyer's courtroom for his arraignment in handcuffs shortly before 11 a.m. Monday. During the brief proceeding, Assistant U.S. Atty. James Conway called Latchin an Iraqi intelligence spy assigned to assimilate himself into [U.S.] culture. Conway said Latchin lied during a July 22, 1999, interview with an immigration official concerning answers from his 1998 application for U.S. citizenship. Under oath, Latchin denied affiliation to any association or group and claimed he had worked for only two businesses in the last five years: Service Service Inc. of Schiller Park and St. Louis-based Huntleigh USA, a passenger and baggage-screening service that contracted with a number of airports, including O'Hare International. Federal officials said Latchin was employed by the Mukhabbarat while he worked at O'Hare from 1995 to 1997 for Service Service and then Huntleigh, officials said. Latchin worked at the airport again in April 2000 for Prospect Airport Services Inc., a Des Plaines company providing airline-related contract services to major carriers, city aviation spokeswoman Annette Martinez said. But Fitzgerald said Latchin's work experience was not related to his dealings with the Mukhabbarat. Neighbors in Des Plaines were shocked at the news of Latchin's arrest. Neighbor Grace Morgan, 55, described Latchin as a nice person who occasionally helped her with her garbage. The family kept to themselves, but were nice people, Morgan said. [Latchin] always said, `Hello.' Latchin faced financial problems in recent years. He filed for personal bankruptcy on Oct. 9 in Chicago, according to court records. He had about $55,000 in credit card debt and owed $23,000 on a 2000 Cadillac Escalade and $6,000 on a 1998 Ford Taurus. Latchin was unemployed at the time of the filing, and his wife, Stella, was an airline gate agent for almost six years with American Eagle Airlines, earning about $37,000 annually, according to court records. The
WSJ Editorial, Charges against Chalabi Dropped
Wall Street Journal Review Outlook September 3, 2004 Charges Dropped Call it a victory for Iraq's fledgling rule of law. Iraqi politicians Ahmed Chalabi and his nephew Salem were cleared this week of charges brought against them last month by Judge Zuahir al Maliky. Both of the Chalabis had vigorously denied the allegations, which they said were politically motivated and which certainly looked suspicious to us. This wasn't the first time Judge Maliky had moved against Mr. Chalabi or his Iraqi National Congress, and the former exile has many rivals in the interim government. The elder Mr. Chalabi returned to Baghdad three weeks ago to contest the counterfeiting charges. After meeting Judge Maliky, who has prosecutorial powers, Mr. Chalabi said Wednesday that the charges have been dropped. As for the separate murder charge brought against Salem by the same judge, a spokesman for the INC says that Judge Maliky has reduced it to a summons to appear as an informational witness. Salem Chalabi is the attorney in charge of the tribunal prosecuting Saddam Hussein, so the charges against him could only have brought joy to the Baathists who want to discredit the new government. Judge Maliky's behavior was especially dismaying because he was appointed by former U.S. regent in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. And both the White House National Security Council and CIA have wanted to marginalize Ahmed Chalabi in favor of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Jockeying for power is inevitable in newly free Baghdad, but the U.S. didn't topple Saddam so that his successors could use prosecutors to eliminate rivals the way he did.
Saddam's Baath Party is Back, Knight Ridder
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9595601.htm Posted on Mon, Sep. 06, 2004 Saddam's Baath Party is back in business By Hannah Allam Knight Ridder Newspapers BAGHDAD, Iraq - By day, Iraqis loyal to Saddam's Hussein's much-feared Baath Party recite their oath in clandestine meetings, solicit donations from former members and talk politics over sugary tea at a Baghdad cafe known as simply The Party. By night, cells of these same men stage attacks on American and Iraqi forces, host soirees for Saddam's birthday and other former regime holidays, and debrief informants still dressed in suits and ties from their jobs in the new, U.S.-backed Iraqi government. Even with Saddam under lock and key, the Baath Party is back in business. The pan-Arab socialist movement is going strong with sophisticated computer technology, high-level infiltration of the new government and plenty of recruits in thousands of disenchanted, impoverished Sunni Muslim Iraqis, according to interviews with current and former members, Iraqi government officials and groups trying to root out former Baathists. The political party has morphed into a catchall resistance movement that poses a serious challenge to interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a Baathist-turned-opposition leader. Allawi has acknowledged he's holding talks with members of the former regime in hopes of gaining a handle on the violence and political disarray. But he's up against a force with deep pockets, allies in neighboring countries and an excuse to fight as long as 135,000 American troops remain on Iraqi soil. There are two governments in Iraq, said Mithal al Alusi, director general of the Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification, a group overseen by Iraqi politician and former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi. (The Baathists) are like thieves, stealing the power of the new government. Their work is organized and strong. Ostensibly banned since Saddam's ouster, the Baath Party has rebuilt itself by sending top members of the former regime to safe houses in Jordan and Syria, Iraqi government officials said. The foot soldiers - mainly from the vast ranks of mid-level members - remain in Iraq, where they've started Web sites and formed independent cells and communicate outside the radar of U.S. forces through a word-of-mouth network known in Baathist parlance as the thread. No one can say with certainty how big the latest Baathist incarnation is. The secrecy of the organization is evident even on one of its main Web sites, where a pop-up feature tells users how to erase the Web address from the computer's memory. In the Saddam stronghold north and west of the capital, a sprawling area known as the Sunni Triangle, Baathists freely distribute price lists to unemployed young men. Burning a U.S. Humvee or detonating a homemade bomb can earn them a few hundred dollars. Killing an American soldiers brings at least $1,000. A political science professor at Baghdad University who's a former Baathist and has been involved in negotiations between the party and the U.S.-led coalition said, The Americans came to Iraq with a foggy picture of what is going on, including their ideas about the Baathists. The U.S. military and the U.S. State department declined to comment on the Baathist resurgence. The 52-year-old professor, who did not want his name used, said his American colleagues mistakenly believed that Saddam's capture in December was the end of the Baathist movement in Iraq. Instead, he continued, that's just when party members in Iraq started reconciling with powerful Baathists in Damascus, Syria, and Amman, Jordan. The result was the return to Iraq of a handful of prominent exiled Iraqi members, who created a shadowy, neo-Baathist organization called Al Islah, Arabic for The Reform. The group held a conference in London in early spring, according to news accounts of the private meeting and sources familiar with the participants. This conference ... stressed one thing: that there is no difference between the Baath Party and the resistance, the professor said. They are equal. Within a year after the fall of the former regime, the Baath Party was restructured as an umbrella organization for opposition groups that run the gamut from anti-occupation nationalists to Islamic extremists, said Sabah Kadhim, spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Kadhim said there is no doubt that Baathists remain active in Iraq, numbering in the thousands. The Iraqi government is struggling to track their activities, he said, because of the U.S.-led dismantling of the old intelligence apparatus and the fact that former Baathists are much better trained and organized than the Allawi government's fledgling agents. (The Baathists) have their weapons and they have their money and they are still in Iraq, Kadhim said. Some of them are highly capable and they resent the fact that they are no longer in charge. The most brazen announcement of the Baathist resurgence came
WSJ, The Price of Fallujah
The Wall Street Journal Review Outlook The Price of Fallujah September 8, 2004 Monday's car bombing outside Fallujah, which killed seven American troops and three members of the Iraqi National Guard, is the latest of many blows to the First Marine Expeditionary Force. The 1st MEF has the unenviable task of patrolling the restive al Anbar province west of Baghdad, and we're sorry to report their job appears to have been made all the harder by the hesitancy of their civilian leaders in the White House. Following the late-March massacre of four security contractors in Fallujah, the Marines sensibly decided it was time to impose order in the city, which had been largely left alone by the Army division that had previously occupied the area. But after several weeks of hard fighting, and just days from establishing control, the Marines were called to a halt by then Iraq czar Paul Bremer and his bosses at the National Security Council. The city was handed over to a group of local thugs euphemistically called the Fallujah Brigade, who have proven to be feckless or worse, and lately the city appears to have come under the sway of Taliban-like religious authorities. We understand the difficultly of the decisions faced by Bremer Co., who feared that further use of force in Fallujah in April might have pushed that month's unrest beyond a tipping point. But it's also clear that the deal set a terrible precedent. Other Sunni towns like Ramadi and Samarra now appear to be slipping away from the control of legitimate authority, and Fallujah continues to serve as a haven for the terrorists and bomb-makers targeting American forces and Iraqi civilians. Monday's attack is a powerful reminder that however much the White House might want to keep Iraq quiet through November, the enemy will have a big say in events as long as they are left a sanctuary. The American people have shown impressive understanding of casualties as part of efforts aimed at victory in Iraq, but they are less likely to be tolerant of losses incurred in a holding pattern.
French Armed Saddam, Wash Times
The CIA, to avoid upsetting ties with French intelligence, played down the French role in helping Saddam. The agency had a weak human intelligencegathering capability, and France, because of its history of ties to Iraq, was much better at penetrating Saddam's regime. September 08, 2004 French connection armed Saddam By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book Treachery (Crown Forum). In this excerpt, he details France's persistence in arming Saddam Hussein. New intelligence revealing how long France continued to supply and arm Saddam Hussein's regime infuriated U.S. officials as the nation prepared for military action against Iraq. The intelligence reports showing French assistance to Saddam ongoing in the late winter of 2002 helped explain why France refused to deal harshly with Iraq and blocked U.S. moves at the United Nations. No wonder the French are opposing us, one U.S. intelligence official remarked after illegal sales to Iraq of military and dual-use parts, originating in France, were discovered early last year before the war began. That official was careful to stipulate that intelligence reports did not indicate whether the French government had sanctioned or knew about the parts transfers. The French company at the beginning of the pipeline remained unidentified in the reports. France's government tightly controls its aerospace and defense firms, however, so it would be difficult to believe that the illegal transfers of equipment parts took place without the knowledge of at least some government officials. Iraq's Mirage F-1 fighter jets were made by France's Dassault Aviation. Its Gazelle attack helicopters were made by Aerospatiale, which became part of a consortium of European defense companies. It is well-known that the Iraqis use front companies to try to obtain a number of prohibited items, a senior Bush administration official said before the war, refusing to discuss Iraq's purchase of French warplane and helicopter parts. The State Department confirmed intelligence indicating the French had given support to Iraq's military. U.N. sanctions prohibit the transfer to Iraq of arms and materiel of all types, including military aircraft and spare parts, State Department spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said. We take illicit transfers to Iraq very seriously and work closely with our allies to prevent Iraq from acquiring sensitive equipment. Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, declared that France's selling of military equipment to Iraq was international treason as well as a violation of a U.N. resolution. As a pilot and a former war pilot, this disturbs me greatly that the French would allow in any way parts for the Mirage to be exported so the Iraqis could continue to use those planes, Stevens said. The French, unfortunately, are becoming less trustworthy than the Russians, said Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. It's outrageous they would allow technology to support the jets of Saddam Hussein to be transferred. The U.S. military was about to go to war with Iraq, and thanks to the French, the Iraqi air force had become more dangerous. The pipeline French aid to Iraq goes back decades and includes transfers of advanced conventional arms and components for weapons of mass destruction. The central figure in these weapons ties is French President Jacques Chirac. His relationship with Saddam dates to 1975, when, as prime minister, the French politician rolled out the red carpet when the Iraqi strongman visited Paris. I welcome you as my personal friend, Chirac told Saddam, then vice president of Iraq. The French put Saddam up at the Hotel Marigny, an annex to the presidential palace, and gave him the trappings of a head of state. The French wanted Iraqi oil, and by establishing this friendship, Chirac would help France replace the Soviet Union as Iraq's leading supplier of weapons and military goods. In fact, Chirac helped sell Saddam the two nuclear reactors that started Baghdad on the path to nuclear weapons capability. France's corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf war. By 2000, France had become Iraq's largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment, according to a senior member of Congress who declined to be identified. Saddam developed networks for illegal supplies to get around the U.N. arms embargo and achieve a military buildup in the years before U.S. forces launched a second assault on Iraq. One spare-parts pipeline flowed from a French company to
Fallujah Brigade was Fiasco, LAT
Los Angeles Times 7:04 PM PDT. September 10, 2004 Dissolution of Brigade Is Setback for Marines By Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writer RAMADI, Iraq - The controversial Iraqi military force formed by the Marines in a last-ditch effort to pacify the restive city of Fallujah has been disbanded in the face of continuing violence, assaults on government security forces and evidence that some members have been working openly with insurgents. The dissolution of the Fallujah Brigade, composed of former members of the Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein's special security forces, was made known to its members Thursday evening. It marked a decisive setback for the Marines, who had sought to avoid an all-out assault in the spring by arranging for a local security force led by Iraqi ex-generals to restore order. The Fallujah Brigade is done, over, said Marine Col. Jerry L. Durrant, who oversees the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit's involvement with Iraqi security forces. The whole Fallujah Brigade thing was a fiasco. Initially it worked out OK, but it wasn't a good idea for very long. Durrant did not say what the Marines might do next, but U.S. warplanes Friday bombed Fallujah for the fourth consecutive day and the air campaign is widely expected to continue and possibly intensify.Friday's air attack targeted earth-moving equipment being used by insurgents to build fighting positions, a Marine spokesman said. With the demise of the Fallujah Brigade, the Marines are left with no attractive options for rooting out Fallujah's entrenched insurgency, a movement that has spread to surrounding villages and left the interim Iraqi government without control of the nation's largest cities west of Baghdad, the capital. Thousands of Marines remain based as close as two miles from Fallujah, but the insurgents -- local and foreign fighters backed by firebrand Sunni Muslim clerics -- have had several months to dig in and make it more difficult for American or Iraqi government forces to launch a ground attack. The new development comes as U.S. forces seek to re-establish Iraqi government control in several insurgent bastions including Samarra, to the north of Baghdad, just months before scheduled national elections. Gen. Abdullah Hamid Wael, the brigade's latest leader, announced the dissolution on instructions from the Ministry of Defense. Speaking at an Iraqi military base west of Fallujah, Wael read from a ministry statement that said any member of the brigade can, as an individual, join the Iraqi national guard or the Iraqi police. Discontent rippled through the group, many of whose members had hoped that it would remain intact and eventually become a unit of the new army. Judging by members' comments, it seemed likely that some would openly rejoin the insurgency, in which many had been involved before joining the brigade. That will make it all the more difficult for U.S. soldiers and Iraqi government forces to retake Fallujah -- currently a no go area for U.S. troops. We don't know where to go now after this dismissal by the American troops and the Iraqi interim government, said Brig. Gen. Tayseer Latief of the brigade. They leave us no other option, but to join the resistance. Ministry of Defense officials declined comment Friday. When the brigade was established, Marine commanders acknowledged that many members either were insurgent fighters or had connections to them. The insurgents waged pitched battles against Marines for weeks last April. The goal in forming the force was to avoid a bloodbath by allowing the Marines to withdraw from the city but leaving a proxy force to tamp down insurgent activity and apprehend people responsible for the killing of four U.S. civilian security contractors March 31. Initially, Marine commanders boasted that the brigade would root out anti-American forces and target foreign fighters. The Marines' hope was that because of their military training and pride in having responsibility for their town, brigade members would stand up against those who fought the American military and Iraqi interim government forces. In the end, most brigade members' prior allegiance to the insurgency proved impossible to sever. The Brigade made no effort to restrict insurgent activities, members and the Marines said. Fallujah became even safer for insurgents, who could take refuge, plot attacks, and run manufacturing centers for car bombs and other explosives. Made up of 1600 former members of the Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, the brigade was created formally on May 1. Four months later, as the brigade is dissolved, its members are better armed, better equipped and better off, having received salaries and weapons from the Marines. Paid on a monthly basis according to their rank, wages ranged from $260 for low-level soldiers to $700 for generals, according to one of the Brigade's staff officers. The Marines also gave Brigade members new semiautomatic rifles and vehicles, and furnished a
Chalabi Aide, Many Iraqis want ties with Israel, Haaretz
Haaretz September 13, 2004 Many Iraqis want ties with Israel, Chalabi aide says By Yoav Stern Many elements in Iraq are interested in diplomatic ties with Israel, according to Mithal al-Alousi, an aide to Ahmed Chalabi and a member of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress Party, who attended a conference on terrorism at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center this week. Al-Alousi heads the Iraqi government's de-Baathification campaign, meant to keep Baathists from the old regime out of the new government. He told Haaretz that many intellectuals in Iraq know that Israel must be taken into account as an existing fact and that generations of people have been born here. It is in Iraq's interests to have diplomatic relations with everyone, and that is what we want. Ten days ago, the Iraqi ambassador in London told Haaretz that there is a powerful lobby in Baghdad pushing for ties with Israel. Yesterday, the Arab Web site Illaf published a report saying that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hishiyar Zibai is the most prominent of those pushing for an end to the state of war between Iraq and Israel. But Israeli officials are following American advice and keeping a low profile when it comes to talk of ties with Baghdad. The Israelis realize that raising their profile on the issue could harm the new Iraqi regime's efforts to stabilize the country. According to the Illaf report, quoting Iraqi diplomats in Amman, last week there was a meeting in Amman of senior Iraqis with Israelis. Jordanian government sources said there are contacts between Israelis and Iraqis, though usually it is business people, not government officials. The sources said the Iraqi defense minister also favors a thaw in relations with Israel, but Iraqi President Iyad Alawi is opposed, arguing that the Iraqi government should concentrate on rehabilitating the country. According to al-Alousi, his controversial party boss, Chalabi, did not know about the trip to Israel, which was at the invitation of the conference organizers. He said Chalabi may not have known, but he supports contacts with Israel. It's time to end the secrecy, he said, the truth shall win.
Chalabi Aide Fired, Haaretz
Haaretz Last Update: 13/09/2004 22:26 Iraqi National Congress fires Chalabi aide for visiting Israel By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has fired one of its most senior members for visiting Israel, a spokesman for the group said Monday. During an emergency meeting, the leadership of the former exile group decided to fire Mithal al-Alousi from the Iraqi National Conference, spokesman Haidar al-Mousawi told The Associated Press. Al-Alousi, who was in Israel attending a conference on terrorism at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, said that many elements in Iraq are interested in diplomatic ties with Israel. Al-Alousi heads the Iraqi government's de-Baathification campaign, meant to keep Baathists from the old regime out of the new government. He told Haaretz that many intellectuals in Iraq know that Israel must be taken into account as an existing fact and that generations of people have been born here. It is in Iraq's interests to have diplomatic relations with everyone, and that is what we want. Al-Alousi's visit angered his colleagues, who said they only knew about the trip from the media. His statements, which were carried by the media, do not represent the Iraqi National Congress' point of view, an INC statement said. Entifadh Qanbar, an INC spokesman in London, said relations with Israel would be up to the new Iraqi government. We also support solving regional conflicts by peaceful and political means, he said. Ten days ago, the Iraqi ambassador in London told Haaretz that there is a powerful lobby in Baghdad pushing for ties with Israel. Sunday, the Arab Web site Illaf published a report saying that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hishiyar Zibai is the most prominent of those pushing for an end to the state of war between Iraq and Israel. But Israeli officials are following American advice and keeping a low profile when it comes to talk of ties with Baghdad. The Israelis realize that raising their profile on the issue could harm the new Iraqi regime's efforts to stabilize the country. According to the Illaf report, quoting Iraqi diplomats in Amman, last week there was a meeting in Amman of senior Iraqis with Israelis. Jordanian government sources said there are contacts between Israelis and Iraqis, though usually it is business people, not government officials. The sources said the Iraqi defense minister also favors a thaw in relations with Israel, but Iraqi President Iyad Alawi is opposed, arguing that the Iraqi government should concentrate on rehabilitating the country. According to al-Alousi, his controversial party boss, Chalabi, did not know about the trip to Israel, which was at the invitation of the conference organizers. He said Chalabi may not have known, but he supports contacts with Israel. It's time to end the secrecy, he said, the truth shall win. He complained that when he undertook to head the de-Baathification of Iraq's government he asked Germany - the only other country that had a similar experience, with denazification - but had not received any cooperation from Berlin, or from any other country, about the best ways to go about the process of keeping officials from the former regime out of the new government. Al-Alousi said he was aware of the risk of coming to Israel - he flew via Turkey - but with so many other threats against him, he was used to daily threats to his life. He said he expects to have a lot of problems from some people, but faith in the cause is a guarantee I will solve the problems.
Jim Hoagland, Allawi's Premature Victory Lap
The Washington Post Allawi's Premature Victory Lap By Jim Hoagland September 19, 2004 Americans who resist basing judgments about world events on partisan or personal preferences confront a dilemma in assessing the current course of the war in Iraq. And the coming week will only sharpen that dilemma. For reasons of electoral self-interest, the Bush administration will portray Iraq as being carried by tides of progress inexorably toward shores of stability. The White House is calling in Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to help in a public relations blitz at the United Nations and in Washington. Allawi is sufficiently shrewd and sufficiently grateful to President Bush for liberating Iraq to play the role with ease. And only the most embittered Bush critic can wish Iraq not to make progress under Allawi -- or fail to recognize and honor the continuing sacrifices that American troops and Iraqi citizens make daily to promote tolerance and freedom in the Middle East. But putting Allawi on a pedestal -- especially if it is to burnish a political campaign -- underlines the dangers of basing policy on image and a war strategy on any one individual. The administration rushes past the dubious history of U.S. involvement with Third World strongmen eager to praise benefactors and crush opponents. Graveyards in African or Asian jungles, as well as on the French Riviera, are filled with allies deemed indispensable by past U.S. presidents. More significantly, the administration papers over widening inconsistencies in Allawi's approach to his country's main population groups and to the rule of law in Iraq. With U.S. acquiescence, he ignores the Transitional Administrative Law when that interim constitution is inconvenient for his purposes. His vaguely defined role in ordering U.S. troops into battle in the new pol-mil plan that is being pursued in Baghdad also causes confusion. Pol-mil is shorthand for political-military, the name of an influential bureau in the State Department and of a doctrine for using carefully calculated military force to produce favorable political change. Winning hearts and minds is a well-known feature of this counterinsurgency. U.S. officials point to the sieges of Fallujah and Najaf as examples of Allawi's successful pursuit of a sophisticated pol-mil approach that has been developed in recent weeks under U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte. In reality, these flawed exercises in applying coercive power in variegated fashion may contribute over time to nation-splitting rather than to nation-building. In Fallujah, Allawi periodically calls in airstrikes by U.S. warplanes to pound concentrations of foreign jihadists, but he withholds force against the Baathist diehards who control much of that city and other municipalities in the Sunni heartland. His hearts and minds approach toward Sunni Baathists stands in unexplained contrast to his determination to destroy at any cost the Shiite rebel forces of Moqtada Sadr in Najaf last month. Far from using force to help bring about the compromise arranged at the last moment by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Allawi actively intervened to try to prevent that outcome. He asked U.S. authorities to discourage or even block Sistani from rushing back from a London sickbed to Najaf via Kuwait and Basra, according to a U.S. official involved in fielding Allawi's secret request. When his plea failed, Allawi dispatched two aides to try to talk Sistani out of returning to reclaim peacefully a holy shrine that Sadr had occupied. Sistani persisted, and both Sadr and the shrine survived. Allawi's determination to risk making Sadr a martyr split his government and led his national security adviser, Mowaffak Rubaie, to quit and leave the country. The prime minister, who was groomed for his role by the CIA, is also encountering growing suspicion from Iraq's Kurdish minority, which sees its political rights and share in national revenue being progressively watered down. An official rosy glow will surround Allawi on his rounds this week. But even the CIA does not see things that way -- privately. A national intelligence estimate disclosed by the New York Times the other day paints a gloomy picture of the separatist trends in Iraq. Could the agency be running a supply-side intelligence operation, in which covert operators bring their client to power to provide shambles for analysts to decry? Those in Congress studying intelligence reform may want to inquire. Allawi's U.S. trip should not be treated as a victory lap. He needs to hear probing questions -- from both presidential candidates. And they need to hear a greater commitment to democracy and the rule of law than he has demonstrated thus far. Only that kind of trip can illuminate the path ahead in Iraq. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Iraqi Colonel arrested as spy Iraq News note
NB: In the period between the 1991 Iraq War and the 2003 Iraq War, the CIA, working with Ayyad Allawi, and his organization, the Iraqi National Accord, attempted several coups. Each time they were penetrated by Iraqi intelligence and failed. Allawi thinks you can use Ba'athists to fight Ba'athists, but how can we be confident that the same thing that happened in the 1990s is not happening again, on a very massive scale? Sunday Telegraph Iraqi colonel arrested as a rebel spy By Aqeel Hussein in Samarra (Filed: 26/09/2004) A colonel in the Iraqi National Guard has been arrested on charges of aiding insurgents by passing on tip-offs about planned raids on resistance safe houses. Samir Al-daraji led a unit of Iraqi troops that carried out raids around the rebel-held city of Samarra, north west of Baghdad. American troops arrested him last week after a series of operations went wrong and troops attacked empty houses that had previously been identified as resistance command centres. It is true that Col Al-daraji gave information to the resistance, said Col Adnan Thabit, the head of the National Guard in the city. In the last weeks we have carried out several searches for people who have obviously been warned in advance that they were going to be raided. The Americans say they have received information that Al-daraji disclosed our plans. Last week an American attack on the house of Khalid Al-abbasy, the purported leader of the local resistance fighters, reduced the building to rubble but failed to kill any rebels. The compromised operation is thought to have been the last straw for American commanders. Col Al-daraji's brother, Ahmed, acknowledged that the family had links with the resistance. We talked about one of us joining the resistance and one of us joining the Iraqi army, he said. People say my brother is a traitor but I believe him to be a hero for working against the occupation. Samarra has been outside American control for three months since a daring mortar attack by rebels on the city's National Guard base. That incident forced the Americans and their local allies to withdraw to the outskirts of the city. The city has been cordoned-off for days and the United States has launched air strikes against the rebels as preparations are made for a new ground assault by the coalition. Last week police officials said that three people had been killed in air attacks. The main bridge into the city has been shut down, forcing the local population to cross the Tigris river by boat. The Iraqi National Guard has established checkpoints on all main roads into the city. Even if US and Iraqi government forces retake Samarra their control of the city will be limited by continuing infiltration of the security forces by insurgents. At present, any Iraqi in Samarra who wants to serve in the police force must first ask permission from the rebels. In a separate development yesterday, US aircraft launched a fresh air attack on the rebel-held city of Falluja. Officials said they had received intelligence reports that terrorists loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who were the target of the raid, were planning new attacks on Iraqi and coalition forces.
Allawi Presses to Bring Back Baathists, NYT
New York Times October 13, 2004 THE PRIME MINISTER Allawi Presses Effort to Bring Back Baathists By EDWARD WONG and ERIK ECKHOLM BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 12 - Seeking to speed the return of senior officials of the former ruling Baath Party into the government, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has tried to dismantle a powerful independent commission that was established after the American invasion to keep such people from power. It is the most aggressive move yet by Dr. Allawi, a former Baathist who fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein, to bring former ranking party members into his fold. Dr. Allawi says the readmissions will dampen an increasingly lethal insurgency by co-opting disenfranchised Sunni Muslim Baathists. The expertise of high officials from the old Iraqi security forces is also urgently needed to help combat the guerrillas, he contends. And with general elections scheduled for January, Dr. Allawi and American officials are scrambling for ways to bring reluctant Sunnis into the political process. Dr. Allawi's push reflects, in part, his long power struggle with Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile who is chairman of the commission and favors a thorough purging of senior Baathists. But it is also part of a deeper battle for the soul of the Iraqi government and will determine who holds some of the highest offices. Dr. Allawi's efforts to limit the purging process could widen the divide between the country's majority Shiite Muslim population and the Sunni minority, which ruled the region for centuries. Because most of the top Baathists were Sunnis, Dr. Allawi's moves have already drawn sharp opposition from Shiite political leaders, though he is himself a Shiite. Jawad al-Maliki, deputy head of the Dawa Islamic Party, one of the most powerful Shiite parties, said Dr. Allawi's orders were outside the law and that the commission had every right to remove all trace of the Baathists. Recent arrests of Iraqi security officials by the American military point to another danger: former Baathists who are readmitted to the government without enough precautions can aid the insurgency from within. Last month, the American military arrested Brig. Gen. Talib Abid Ghayib al-Lahibi, who had been assigned to command three Iraqi National Guard battalions in restive Diyala Province. The military said the general, an infantry commander under Mr. Hussein, had associations with known insurgents. In August, marines arrested the police chief of Anbar Province, which includes the jihadist stronghold of Falluja, and began investigating him for suspected ties to the insurgency. The police chief, Jaadan Muhammad Alwan, was a high-ranking Baathist during the Hussein years. It's a challenge when you have so many individuals, a senior American commander said. You've got some individuals who are capable, but some of the individuals have a bad background. There are also concerns that former Baathists may be unwilling to stand too strongly against insurgents. In May, the marines handed control of Falluja over to an ad-hoc militia, the Falluja Brigade, commanded by Hussein-era military officers and senior Baathists, but it quickly withered under pressure from the insurgency. It disbanded over the summer, with many members actually joining the guerrillas. Dr. Allawi's effort began in earnest early last month, when the head of his cabinet issued an order to disband the commission in charge of purges and set up a more lenient judicial system in its place. A council of judges ruled that the commission was enshrined in the interim constitution. But Dr. Allawi's cabinet has since asked government ministries not to deal directly with the commission, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. Last month, Dr. Allawi's cabinet demanded that the commission leave its office building inside the fortified government headquarters along the Tigris River, said a general director of the commission, Ali Faisal al-Lami. The government also issued new badges for entrance into the Green Zone but gave only 50 to the commission, enough for just a fifth of the commission's work force, he said. The rest of the employees are now working at home or in offices outside the fortified compound. The new system proposed by Dr. Allawi would readmit former senior Baathists unless criminal charges are brought against them and they are found guilty in a court, according to a memo sent to all ministries last month by his cabinet head, Zuhair Hamody. The readmission of noncriminal senior Baathists has the approval of the American government. The former top American administrator here, L. Paul Bremer III, purged all high-ranking Baathists from public positions in May 2003, but reversed that decision last spring when it became clear that experienced people were needed to help stand up the nascent government. The commission members contend that Dr. Allawi's system could lay the foundation for an effective reconstitution of the Baath Party, as well as allow
Richard Spertzel: Report Says Iraq Was Threat, WSJ Iraq News Note
Richard Spertzel, a former member of UNSCOM and a member of the Iraq Survey Group, writes in today's WSJ, It is asserted that Iraq was not supporting terrorists. Really? Documentation indicates that Iraq was training non-Iraqis at Salman Pak in terrorist techniques, including assassination and suicide bombing. In addition to Iraqis, trainees included Palestinians, Yemenis, Saudis, Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese. Where are the President and the National Security Council on this? Iraq and the legitimacy of this war is, arguably, the key issue of the presidential race. Why don't they say the ISG found documents that show Iraq was training terrorists? The same thing happened with Iraqi documents recently detailed by Scott Wheeler for Cybercast News Service. Without the backing of the administration, the information falls into a black hole and disappears. That is so, even as this issue is relevant to understanding the ongoing war in Iraq. Who is the enemy? Do the foreign terrorists operate independently of the Baathists; in conjunction with them; or somewhere in between? We can't fight this war properly, unless we have the best possible answers to those questions, while the result of not having those answers is unnecessary casualties, both American and Iraqi. The Wall Street Journal Have War Critics Even Read the Duelfer Report? By RICHARD SPERTZEL October 14, 2004 After the release of the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer report, the headlines blazed No WMD Found. Most stories continued by saying that Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat to the U.S. and thus the U.S. was wrong to eliminate that threat. This reflects the notion that Iraq was only a threat if it had military munitions filled with WMD. The claim Iraq was not an imminent threat was also expounded by pundits that seemingly crawled out of the woodwork as well as those opposed to President Bush. But have these individuals read carefully the report before engaging in such anti-Bush rhetoric? While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale production of chemical nerve agents, sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, ricin, aflatoxin, and other unspecified biological agents. These laboratories were also evaluating whether various poisons would change the texture, smell or appearance of foodstuffs. These aspects of the ISG report have been ignored by the pundits and press. Did these constitute an imminent threat? Perhaps it depends how you define threat. The chemical section reports that the M16 Directorate had a plan to produce and weaponize nitrogen mustard in rifle grenades and a plan to bottle sarin and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine bottles which they would ship to the United States and Europe. Are we to believe this plan existed because they liked us? Or did they wish to do us harm? The major threat posed by Iraq, in my opinion, was the support it gave to terrorists in general, and its own terrorist activity. The ISG was also told that ricin was being developed into stable liquid to deliver as an aerosol in various munitions. Such development was not just for assassination. If Iraq was successful in developing an aerosolizable ricin, it made a significant step forward. The development had to be for terrorist delivery. Even on a small scale this must be considered as a WMD. Biological agents, delivered on a small scale (terrorist delivery) can maim or kill a large number of people. The Iraqi Intelligence organizations had a history of conducting tests on humans with chemical and biological substances that went beyond assassination studies. While many of these were in the 1970s and 1980s, multiple documents and testimony indicate that such testing continued through the 1990s and into the next millennium, perhaps as late as 2002. Do we wait until such weapons are used against our domestic population before we act? Is that the way that some people wish to have the U.S. protected from terrorist activity? It is asserted that Iraq was not supporting terrorists. Really? Documentation indicates that Iraq was training non-Iraqis at Salman Pak in terrorist techniques, including assassination and suicide bombing. In addition to Iraqis, trainees included Palestinians, Yemenis, Saudis, Lebanese, Egyptians and Sudanese. As for the U.N. inspection system preventing such RD, why did Iraq not declare these clandestine laboratories to Unscom and Unmovic and why did these inspection agencies not discover these laboratories? Might it have been that there were multiple informants working inside Unscom and Unmovic that kept the Iraqi Intelligence Service informed as to what sites were to be inspected? Information collected by ISG indicates that this was the case. In late 2002 and early 2003, equipment and materials were removed from several sites 24 hours before U.N. inspections. Such
Bartle Bull, Iraq's New Power Couple, NYT
New York Times October 15, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Iraq's New Power Couple By BARTLE BREESE BULL Baghdad Moktada al-Sadr's headquarters in Najaf is in a tiny alley next to the city's famous shrine of the Imam Ali. As the fighting between American forces and his Mahdi Army wound down in August, I went there with two of his men, who showed me a piece of paper bearing two seals: one belonged to their boss, the other to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the ultimate Shiite religious authority in Iraq. Below the seals were the five promises of Mr. Sadr's cease-fire, including his commitment to participate actively in the political process and to work cooperatively toward Iraq's January elections. At the time, many observers scoffed at the deal, citing Mr. Sadr's previous broken promises and the failure of his men to turn over their arms after the Najaf siege. Yet two recent developments - one covered in the international press, the other unnoticed - show that such skepticism may have been misplaced. The first is Mr. Sadr's stated intention to form a political party; the second is the behind-the-scenes rejuvenation of Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile leader and longtime favorite of the Pentagon who so notoriously split with his American sponsors in May. Mr. Sadr's commitment is for real, it represents momentous progress for the democratic project in Iraq and it signals the emergence of a broad and powerful Shiite front - with Ahmad Chalabi at its center. The weapons handover in Sadr City, the huge Baghdad slum named after Mr. Sadr's father, is just the latest promising sign. Mr. Sadr's people told me in confidence after the Najaf uprising about plans to start a political party for the upcoming elections. They had planned to call their political organization the Mahdi Party, in homage to a 12th-century imam whose return, Shiites believe, will bring Iraq's majority group its era of justice. Now they have gone public with their electoral plans and, in a sign of growing political sophistication, they have chosen the more accommodating name of the Patriotic Front. The Mahdi Army insurrections this summer in Najaf and Sadr City had nothing to do with Mr. Sadr's thinking that he could achieve military goals against American forces. If he had wanted to derail the occupation, he would have done what the Sunni insurgents do: keep his men out of harm's way and focus his violence toward fellow Iraqis, foreign civilians and government targets like power stations. Rather, he was moving to ensure his future role by seizing political momentum among the Shiite demographic that matters to him: the young urban poor. Similarly, it is not weariness and attrition that are now making him lay down his weapons. It is easy to buy or make more weapons in Iraq. And the ranks of his followers can be as endlessly replenished as were those of the Vietcong. I have spoken to members of every age group among them: the 21-year-olds with their black militia garb and rocket-propelled grenades, the 15-year-olds melting holes in the asphalt where the howitzer shells can be placed to lie in wait for American vehicles, the wounded 6-year-olds in hospital beds whose fathers brag that the little boys will be fighting in five years' time. Mr. Sadr's new party and the older Shiite groups are likely to form the basis for a unified list of candidates that should capture at least 55 percent of the vote in January - and possibly more if Kurdish and Sunni groups can be brought into the fold. If this front includes all Shiite factions, it will receive Ayatollah Sistani's approval. But if it leaves out any important Shiite components - including Mr. Sadr - the old man will remain silent. Thus Mr. Sadr's new direction, like his efforts in Najaf, is not a military move but a political one. Just as most of his country's violence consists of Iraqi attacks against fellow Iraqis, the basic fact of Iraqi politics is not opposition to the occupation, but maneuvering between Iraqis in the game of sectarian and ethnic politics. Meanwhile, Ahmad Chalabi's resurgence is natural. While American officials have been embarrassed by reports that he convinced them of exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons, most Iraqis do not care if he hoodwinked Washington. He is an Iraqi, and his loyalties and destiny lie with his own country, not America. What does matter to Iraqis is that if there is one man alive without whom Saddam Hussein would still be in power, that man is Mr. Chalabi. President Bush may lose his job over his Iraqi adventure. The Kurds in their mountains may not really care whether the rest of Iraq was liberated or not. The Sunnis may be sorely missing the perks of Baathist rule. But Mr. Chalabi's fellow Shiites have benefited greatly from the removal of a regime that persecuted them brutally, and they thank him for it. And many Shiites see that Mr. Chalabi, always the savviest Iraqi politician, has continued to make the right moves since the 2003
Iraqi Judge Drops Case Against Chalabi, NYT
September 28, 2004 Iraqi Judge Closes Case Against Ahmad ChalabiBy EDWARD WONG AGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 27 - A senior Iraqi judge said Monday that he had closed a case brought against Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile leader once backed by the Pentagon, for suspected involvement in a counterfeiting operation. The judge, Zuhair al-Maliky, said in a telephone interview that he decided about a week and a half ago that "the evidence was not enough to bring the case to trial." If more evidence emerges, he said, the case will be reopened. The move appears to be a minor victory by Mr. Chalabi over the interim government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a longtime rival of Mr. Chalabi's. The government announced the counterfeiting charge against Mr. Chalabi in August, while he was on vacation at a summer home in Iran. At the time, it appeared to many that the charge was a move by Mr. Allawi to dissuade him from re-entering the country. But Mr. Chalabi did return to Iraq and proceeded to denounce the government, meeting with reporters to proclaim his innocence and vow to return to political life. He aligned himself with Shiite religious leaders here, recasting himself as a champion of Shiite rights. It was the latest twist in Mr. Chalabi's fortunes since he returned to Iraq in the spring of 2003 after decades in exile. Once favored by the Bush administration to be Iraq's first leader after Saddam Hussein's fall, he has spent the last few months fighting for his political future. American and Iraqi forces raided his house here in May on suspicion that he had leaked secrets to Iran. His fortunes sank further when the Americans anointed Dr. Allawi as interim prime minister. Soon afterward, Judge Maliky issued arrest warrants for Mr. Chalabi in the counterfeiting case and for his nephew, Salem Chalabi, in a murder case. At the time, Salem Chalabi was the head of the special Iraqi tribunal set up to try Mr. Hussein and his associates, putting him in a potentially powerful position to command public support. He has accused Judge Maliky and Dr. Allawi of using the charges to dismiss him just five months into his three-year term and win control of the tribunal; Dr. Allawi has said he resigned. Judge Maliky said Monday that the murder investigation, in the killing of a Finance Ministry official involved in an investigation of the Chalabi family's business dealings, was still in force against Salem Chalabi. A seemingly unrelenting string of car bombings continued Monday, when seven Iraqi national guardsmen were killed by a suicide car bomber who rammed into their convoy in the northern city of Mosul, health officials in the city said. Eight people were wounded. In Baghdad, the American military carried out airstrikes on Sunday night and early Monday against residents of Sadr City, the vast and impoverished Shiite district in northeastern Baghdad. The area is home to the Mahdi Army, the militia led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The overnight strikes killed at least six people and wounded at least 46 others, said Qasim Saddam, director of Chewadir Hospital. Among the wounded were 15 women and nine children, he said. A Mahdi Army official who gave his name as Abu Thar said all the people in the hospital were civilians because "we do not admit our casualties into hospitals fearing they might be arrested by the Americans." The American military released a statement on Monday evening that disputed the reports of civilian casualties. "Early indications are that injuries to a large group of people as a result of this engagement did not occur as is being reported," it said, adding that officers had begun an internal investigation "to determine the full set of facts on this matter." Late Monday night, an AC-130 gunship and other aircraft fired into the streets of Sadr City, and loud explosions could be heard for miles. One witness said soldiers in armored vehicles had formed a perimeter along some of the outer streets. Two soldiers with the First Infantry Division died near the town of Balad on Tuesday, one in an automobile accident and the other in an ambush while riding in a patrol that was returning from the scene of the accident, the American military said. The military also said it was charging two First Cavalry Division soldiers, Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr. and Staff Sgt. Cardenas Alban, with murder. The military said the Army's criminal investigation division was still looking
US Military: Insurgents are Mostly Iraqis, LA Times
Insurgents Are Mostly Iraqis, U.S. Military Says Bush, Kerry and Allawi have cited foreign fighters as a major security problem. By Mark MazzettiTimes Staff WriterSeptember 28, 2004WASHINGTON The insistence by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and many U.S. officials that foreign fighters are streaming into Iraq to battle American troops runs counter to the U.S. military's own assessment that the Iraqi insurgency remains primarily a home-grown problem. In a U.S. visit last week, Allawi spoke of foreign insurgents "flooding" his country, and both President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, have cited these fighters as a major security problem. But according to top U.S. military officers in Iraq, the threat posed by foreign fighters is far less significant than American and Iraqi politicians portray. Instead, commanders said, loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime who have swelled their ranks in recent months as ordinary Iraqis bristle at the U.S. military presence in Iraq represent the far greater threat to the country's fragile 3-month-old government.Foreign militants such as Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi are believed responsible for carrying out videotaped beheadings, suicide car bombings and other high-profile attacks. But U.S. military officials said Iraqi officials tended to exaggerate the number of foreign fighters in Iraq to obscure the fact that large numbers of their countrymen have taken up arms against U.S. troops and the American-backed interim Iraqi government. "They say these guys are flowing across [the border] and fomenting all this violence. We don't think so," said a senior military official in Baghdad. "What's the main threat? It's internal." In interviews during his U.S. visit last week, Allawi spoke ominously of foreign jihadists "coming in the hundreds to Iraq." In one interview, he estimated that foreign fighters constituted 30% of insurgent forces. Allawi's comments echoed a theme in Bush's recent campaign speeches: that foreign fighters streaming into the country are proof that the war in Iraq is inextricably linked to the global war on terrorism. Kerry has made a similar case, with a different emphasis. In remarks on the stump last week, he said that the "terrorists pouring across the border" were proof that the Bush administration had turned Iraq into a magnet for foreign fighters hoping to kill Americans.Yet top military officers challenge all these statements. In a TV interview Sunday, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, estimated that the number of foreign fighters in Iraq was below 1,000."While the foreign fighters in Iraq are definitely a problem that have to be dealt with, I still think that the primary problem that we're dealing with is former regime elements of the ex-Baath Party that are fighting against the government and trying to do anything possible to upend the election process," he said. Iraqi elections are scheduled for January.U.S. officials acknowledge that Iraq's porous border especially its boundary with Syria allows arms and money to be smuggled in with relative ease. But they say the traffic from Syria is largely Iraqi Baathists who escaped after the U.S.-led invasion and couriers bringing in money from former members of Hussein's government.At the behest of the interim government, U.S. forces last month cracked down on traffic along the 375-mile Syrian border. During Operation Phantom Linebacker, U.S. troops picked up small numbers of foreign fighters attempting to cross into Iraq, officials say. Yet the bulk of the traffic they detected was the kind that has existed for hundreds of years: smugglers and Syrian tribesmen with close ties to sheiks on Iraq's side of the border. Top military officers said there was little evidence that the dynamics in Iraq were similar to those in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when thousands of Arabs waged war alongside Afghans to drive out the Soviet Union.Instead, U.S. military officials said the core of the insurgency in Iraq was and always had been Hussein's fiercest loyalists, who melted into Iraq's urban landscape when the war began in March 2003. During the succeeding months, they say, the insurgents' ranks have been bolstered by Iraqis who grew disillusioned with the U.S. failure to deliver basic services, jobs and reconstruction projects. It is this expanding group, they say, that has given the insurgency its deadly power and which represents the biggest challenge to an Iraqi government trying to establish legitimacy countrywide. "People try to turn this into the mujahedin, jihad war. It's not that," said one U.S. intelligence official. "How many foreign fighters have been captured and processed? Very few." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-insurgent28sep28,1,6562024.story?coll=la-headlines-world NS?ci=703di=d001pg=ai=890436 Description: Binary
WSJ, The CIA's Insurgency Iraq News Note
NB: This is a central theme of Bush vs. the Beltway. http://www.harpercollins.com/catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060580127 The WSJ also makes clear an important point regarding what went wrong in Iraq. The CIA (not OSD) anticipated that the Iraqi police and regular army could be relied upon to provide order in Iraq after the invasion. Indeed, the mantra of the CIA and State Dep't Arabists was that only Iraqis inside Iraq had legitimacy. So the US made virtually no effort before the war to prepare an Iraqi force that would be loyal to the US and the new regime, with the consequences we see today. Wall Street Journal REVIEW OUTLOOK The CIA's Insurgency The agency's political disinformation campaign. Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Congratulations to Porter Goss for being confirmed last week as the new Director of Central Intelligence. We hope he appreciates that he now has two insurgencies to defeat: the one that the CIA is struggling to help put down in Iraq, and the other inside Langley against the Bush Administration. We wish we were exaggerating. It's become obvious over the past couple of years that large swaths of the CIA oppose U.S. anti-terror policy, especially toward Iraq. But rather than keep this dispute in-house, the dissenters have taken their objections to the public, albeit usually through calculated and anonymous leaks that are always spun to make the agency look good and the Bush Administration look bad. Their latest improvised explosive political device blew up yesterday on the front page of the New York Times, in a story proclaiming that the agency had warned back in January 2003 of a possible insurgency in Iraq. This highly selective leak (more on that below) was conveniently timed for two days before the first Presidential debate. This follows Joe Wilson, whose CIA-employee wife nominated the anti-Bush partisan to assess intelligence on Iraq. Then there's the book by Anonymous, a current CIA employee who has been appearing everywhere to trash U.S. policy, with the approval of agency higher-ups. And now we have one Paul R. Pillar, who has broken his own cover as the author of a classified National Intelligence Estimate this summer outlining pessimistic possibilities for the future of Iraq. That document was also leaked to the New York Times earlier this month, and on Monday columnist Robert Novak reported that it had been prepared at the direction of Mr. Pillar, the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Mr. Novak reported that Mr. Pillar identified himself as such during an off-the-record gathering last week and, while denying he leaked the document, accused the Bush Administration of ignoring the CIA's prewar speculation about the consequences of war with Iraq. Others have since confirmed the thrust of the Novak report. Keep in mind that none of these CIA officials were ever elected to anything, and that they are employed to provide accurate information to officials who present their policy choices for voter judgment. Yet what the CIA insurgents are essentially doing here, with their leaks and insubordination, is engaging in a policy debate. Given the timing of the latest leaks so close to an election, they are now clearly trying to defeat President Bush and elect John Kerry. Yet somehow the White House stands accused of politicizing intelligence? None of this is surprising in the case of Mr. Pillar, who is also trying to protect his own lousy track record in misjudging the terrorist threat. Around September 11, he had the misfortune to write a book that rejected the war metaphor for counterterrorism, comparing it instead to the effort by public health authorities to control communicable diseases. In a public lecture last year at Johns Hopkins University, he sought to downplay Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism. And his corner of the CIA has long claimed that the secular Baathists in Iraq would never do business with the fundamentalist al Qaeda. Tell that to Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the Baathists now cooperating in Fallujah. Yesterday's CIA leak, of the January 2003 memo, also turns out to be what the spooks call disinformation. We're told that its ballyhooed warning of an insurgency is not among the document's key findings and occurs only in the very last sentence of its 38 pages. We're also told there is not a single mention of Zarqawi, the dominant terrorist now in Iraq, or of the Party of Return, the name the Baath Party remnants began circulating soon after the fall of Saddam. The document's after-thought sentence reads: In addition, rogue ex-regime elements could forge an alliance with existing terrorist organizations or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare against the new government or coalition forces. We highlight that phrase about existing terrorist groups because critics of the war like to claim that there were no terrorists in Iraq before the war; now we know that in January 2003 even the CIA said there were. Notably, too,
Southern Iraqi Provinces Push for Autonomy, FT
Financial Times Oil-rich Iraqi provinces push for autonomy By Roula Khalaf in London Published: September 29 2004 20:33 Iraq's oil-rich southern provinces are considering plans to set up an autonomous region - a move that reflects their growing frustration with the central government in Baghdad. Members of the municipal council of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, have been holding talks with officials from councils in two neighbouring provinces on establishing a federal region in the south, following the example of the Kurdish north. The three provinces - Basra, Missan and Dhiqar - account for more than 80 per cent of the proved oil reserves of the country's 18 provinces and provide a large share of the national income. The talks are a political challenge to the embattled interim Iraqi government which is fighting a fierce insurgency in Sunni Arab areas, continued unrest in an impoverished Shia suburb of Baghdad and militant gangs bent on disrupting the country's reconstruction. Diplomats familiar with the talks say the three provinces have felt marginalised in new government institutions, including the consultative assembly, and believe they are not receiving a fair share of economic resources. The cabinet led by Iyad Allawi, the prime minister, includes only one representative from the three provinces. The south has been desperately disappointed and they see Baghdad as continuing to leave them without representation, said a western diplomat. So they are working on ways to organise themselves to have more clout with the centre. Walid Khadduri, editor of the Cyprus-based Middle East Economic Survey, and an expert on Iraq, said the talks on self-rule were alarming. It could weaken the state and lead to the eventual fragmentation of the country. Part of the problem stems from the powers given to local governments by the US occupation authorities before the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq this summer. In order to regain some of these powers, Mr Allawi's government is said to be giving military commanders in the south more civilian authority. Since the end of the Iraq war, the US and, more recently, the Allawi government, have struggled to reconcile the competing demands of the majority Shias and the minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds. The government has sought to quell a popular Sunni insurgency by giving greater representation to Sunni Arab tribes. It also has tried to maintain the support of Iraq's Shia majority by addressing the demands of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest-ranking Shia cleric in the holy city of Najaf, who has insisted on early elections. The Kurdish minority, whose leaders are long-time US allies, has been held in check by the promise of a large measure of autonomy when a permanent constitution is drafted after the January elections. The three provinces, however, have felt left out, and are demanding that their local representatives, rather than the Shia clergy in Najaf, speak for them. In the south people feel Najaf and Karbala [Iraq's second Shia holy city] look down on them as second-class citizens and they would not do better under them any more than under the Sunnis, said a western diplomat. But people close to the Iraqi government say some officials driving the autonomy talks are backed by Muqtada al-Sadr, the renegade Shia cleric who launched an uprising against American troops in July.
Saddam Had WMD, Extensive Terror Ties, CNSNEWS.com
Cybercast News Service CNSNEWS.com http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200410%5CSPE20041004a.html Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror TiesBy Scott WheelerCNSNews.com Staff WriterOctober 04, 2004(CNSNews.com) - Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support terrorist attacks against Americans in Somalia. The memo was written nine months before U.S. Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu by forces loyal to a warlord with alleged ties to al Qaeda.Other memos provide a list of terrorist groups with whom Iraq had relationships and considered available for terror operations against the United States. Among the organizations mentioned are those affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, two of the world's most wanted terrorists. Zarqawi is believed responsible for the kidnapping and beheading of several American civilians in Iraq and claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings in Iraq Sept. 30. Al-Zawahiri is the top lieutenant of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, allegedly helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the U.S., and is believed to be the voice on an audio tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Oct. 1, calling for attacks on U.S. and British interests everywhere.The source of the documentsA senior government official who is not a political appointee provided CNSNews.com with copies of the 42 pages of Iraqi Intelligence Service documents. The originals, some of which were hand-written and others typed, are in Arabic. CNSNews.com had the papers translated into English by two individuals separately and independent of each other.There are no hand-writing samples to which the documents can be compared for forensic analysis and authentication. However, three other experts - a former weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), a retired CIA counter-terrorism official with vast experience dealing with Iraq, and a former advisor to then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton on Iraq - were asked to analyze the documents. All said they comport with the format, style and content of other Iraqi documents from that era known to be genuine.Laurie Mylroie, who authored the book, "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War against America," and advised Clinton on Iraq during the 1992 presidential campaign, told CNSNews.com that the papers represent "the most complete set of documents relating Iraq to terrorism, including Islamic terrorism" against the U.S.Mylroie has long maintained that Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism against the United States. The documents obtained by CNSNews.com , she said, include "correspondence back and forth between Saddam's office and Iraqi Mukhabarat (intelligence agency). They make sense. This is what one would think Saddam was doing at the time."Bruce Tefft, a retired CIA official who specialized in counter-terrorism and had extensive experience
Iraqi Charged for Visiting Israel, NY Sun
Mr. al-Alusi stressed that he was not afraid, but he said: I am nervous that the intelligence service will come after me. There are some members of the new intelligence service who have come in through the back door. By day they wear the uniform, but at night they are with the terrorists. 'I Made a Choice to Visit a Country' New York Sun BY Staff Reporter of the Sun October 5, 2004 WASHINGTON - A criminal court in Iraq is seeking the arrest of a recently sacked senior official in the interim government on charges he violated a 1969 Baathist law that made travel to Israel treason. The former chairman of the Iraqi government's debaathification committee, Mithal al-Alusi, told The New York Sun yesterday in a phone interview that he is in hiding after receiving threats on his life and his family, from both terror groups and members of Prime Minister Allawi's new intelligence services. He said he had been informed of the warrant for his arrest Friday and was quietly asked to leave Iraq within 48 hours. His offense was visiting an enemy state when he attended a counterterrorism conference on September 10 at the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism in Herzliya. I will not give in to the Baathists or the Islamists, Mr. al-Alusi told the Sun. I made a choice to visit a country in the region, and I stand by that choice. Mr. al-Alusi was demoted within the Iraqi National Congress previously last month for his visit to the conference, but said he did not expect the state would take action against him. The coalition has already made so many sacrifices for Iraq, and for what? To return to the old laws of the Baathists? he asked. What are we doing? Where are we going? The Iraqi newspaper al-Sabah, which received a grant from the coalition provisional authority, first reported the charges in its Monday edition and also said members of Mr. al-Alusi's family had disowned him for visiting the Jewish state. The judge who issued the warrant against Mr. al-Alusi, Zuhair al-Maliki, is the same jurist who issued a warrant for the arrest of Ahmad Chalabi, for counterfeiting new Iraqi dinars. The judge dropped that warrant for lack of evidence. Mr. al-Maliki also issued a warrant this summer for the arrest of Mr. Chalabi's nephew Salim Chalabi, on charges that he ordered the murder of an official of the Finance Ministry. Those charges, too, were dropped. Mr. al-Maliki, a former translator who attended law school when Saddam Hussein was in power, was appointed to the bench this year by the chief administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer. Mr. al-Maliki has come under criticism by other Iraqi jurists for lack of experience. An adviser to Mr. Chalabi in Washington, Francis Brooke, told the Sun yesterday that the Iraqi National Congress believed its internal political matters should not be settled by the long arm of the state. He also said members of the congress in Iraq who are sympathetic to Mr. al-Alusi were providing him physical protection. According to Mr. al-Alusi, he needs it. Mr. al-Alusi said in the interview yesterday that he cannot return to his home, after neighbors told him terrorists were hidden inside his garden, awaiting his return with machine guns. I have had to have my sons and wife sent to other homes, he said. It has become too dangerous. Mr. al-Alusi stressed that he was not afraid, but he said: I am nervous that the intelligence service will come after me. There are some members of the new intelligence service who have come in through the back door. By day they wear the uniform, but at night they are with the terrorists. Iraq's relationship with Israel has become an issue in recent weeks, after Mr. Allawi shook hands with Israeli foreign minister, Sylvan Shalom, on the sidelines of the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly. The Iraqi leader came under harsh criticism from Islamic parties in his own government for the handshake, and he soon after clarified to the Iraqi press that his government would abide by the Arab League policy of refusing to recognize the Jewish state. The Jerusalem Post, in its Tuesday edition, quoted the deputy executive director of the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, Jonathan Fighel, as expressing shock at the actions against Mr. al-Alusi. We want to send a message to the American Embassy in Baghdad that such an arrest is unacceptable, Mr. Fighel was quoted by the Israeli paper as saying. Do they know about this incident? Do they agree that someone who arrived on a peaceful mission to Israel should sit in prison for the crime of wanting normalization with this country? the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying. http://www.nysun.com/article/2675
WSJ, Bremer's Selective History
We now know that the Baath Party responded to Iraq's rapid defeat in the conventional war by going underground. And it used that honeymoon period to build its strength--as the Party of Return--for the guerrilla campaign that really kicked off in the late summer of 2003 Wall Street Journal REVIEW OUTLOOK The Viceroy's Apologia L. Paul Bremer's selective Iraq history. Wednesday, October 6, 2004 12:01 a.m. Former viceroy L. Paul Bremer did 14 months of hard service in Iraq, so it is a special shame to see that he is now squandering that legacy by blaming others for what's gone wrong there. All the more so when he doesn't even have the history right. That's our reaction to yesterday's political tempest over quotes from Mr. Bremer faulting the Pentagon and Bush Administration for having too few troops in Iraq. To hear Mr. Bremer's version of it, he arrived in Baghdad on May 6, 2003, to find horrid looting and instability, and an atmosphere of lawlessness that was allowed to grow because we never had enough troops on the ground to stop it. Mr. Bremer revised his remarks slightly late Monday, saying in a statement that I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq. But in a speech at DePauw University in September, Mr. Bremer said he had frequently raised the troop issue and should have been more insistent about it, according to the local paper, adding that the single most important change . . . would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout. You get the idea: Mr. Bremer isn't to blame because he was tossed into a bad situation that only got worse while his pleas for more troops were ignored. And this indeed would be a damning indictment if it were true. Trouble is, we haven't found a single other senior official involved in the war or its aftermath--in or out of uniform--who attests to Mr. Bremer's version of events. I never heard him ask for more troops and he had many opportunities before the President to do so, one senior Administration official tells us. Or to be more precise, Mr. Bremer did finally ask for two more divisions in a June 2004 memo--that is, two weeks prior to his departure and more than a year after he arrived. We heard about his request at the time, but didn't think much about it after we learned that theater commander General John Abizaid was consulted and argued that it was better policy to train Iraqi forces to fill any void. Judging by our ultimate goal of Iraqi independence, and the success that mixed Iraqi and U.S. battalions had retaking Samarra over the weekend, General Abizaid was right. For that matter, if lack of troops was a problem, why didn't Mr. Bremer make better and more consistent use of the ones he already had? He was among those officials involved in the mistaken decision to have Marines stop short in Fallujah last April, and he has since defended that publicly. As for Mr. Bremer's claim that horrid conditions prevailed when he arrived in Baghdad, our own Robert Pollock and other reporters who were there attest otherwise. By early May 2003 the major looting was over, and the country was experiencing a postwar honeymoon of sorts. We understand Mr. Bremer's desire to explain why security has since deteriorated, but we aren't going to learn the lessons we need to win this war if we accept the argument that somehow that looting was the match that lit the insurgency. The truth is that the insurgency was already under way. We now know that the Baath Party responded to Iraq's rapid defeat in the conventional war by going underground. And it used that honeymoon period to build its strength--as the Party of Return--for the guerrilla campaign that really kicked off in the late summer of 2003. Although plenty of Iraqis warned of this threat, Mr. Bremer clearly underestimated it and failed to take the military and political steps that might have countered it. On the military side, Mr. Bremer pursued a two-year plan to build an army oriented toward external defense, not internal threats. And once General Abizaid convinced him of the need for an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, Mr. Bremer envisioned it as a garrison force and resisted its use in counter-insurgency operations. He also rebuffed attempts by the Iraqi National Congress and the two major Kurdish parties to supply the Corps with loyal anti-Baathist fighters. When the April violence flared in Fallujah and Najaf, the 36th Battalion of the ICDC--the only one the parties had been allowed to create--was the only one to prove its worth in battle. (The 36th has been fighting with us in recent days in Samarra.) On the political side, Mr. Bremer underestimated the extent to which putting an early end to the occupation was important. He initially resisted the creation of the Governing Council altogether, and when he allowed it to happen gave it too little power. He also delayed implementing the democracy we had said we came to bring to Iraq, and he ultimately had to be told by
Mobile Iraqi BW Lab?, WND
OPERATION: IRAQI FREEDOM Is this one of Saddam's mobile bio-weapons labs? WND obtains photos of unit capable of producing WMDs Posted: October 6, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern [Photos can be seen by clicking on URL at bottom of article] By Aaron Klein © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com A trailer found by the U.S. in Northern Iraq last year likely was used by Saddam Hussein's regime as a mobile biological weapons laboratory, and not to fill hydrogen balloons as some in Britain and the U.S. have charged, a view supported by exclusive photos obtained by WorldNetDaily that for the first time offer inside views of the trailer components. Kurdish forces seized the trailer in April 2003 at a checkpoint near Mosul in northern Iraq. At the time, the unit was hailed as the closest U.S. forces may have come to finding a smoking gun in their search for weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. But initial swab tests of the mobile unit, which seemed to have been washed thoroughly with a strong decontaminating substance, yielded no traces of biological or chemical agents, leading many critics to conclude the trailer could have been used for legitimate medical purposes. Some in British and American intelligence groups charged the trailers were used for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery and weather balloons. However, photos obtained by WorldNetDaily from a U.S. Army source in Iraq offer a rare glimpse inside the trailer, which indicates the most likely use for the mobile unit was the production of biological agents and not hydrogen. The internal components provide the kind of mobile biological weapons laboratory described to the United Nations' Security Council by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell before the conflict began, and match in design and configuration the mobile weapons labs U.S. intelligence learned about several years ago from an Iraqi scientist. The photos, more than 30 of which were of the inside trailer components, were verified by several military sources and were independently reviewed by intelligence sources familiar with pre-Gulf War Iraqi weapons programs. The images show a large fermenter, several cylinders to supply clean air for production, canisters to feed biological agents, industrial heating machines and a system to capture and compress exhaust gas to eliminate traces of residue - a function not normally used for legitimate biological processes and certainly not for hydrogen production, analysts told WorldNetDaily. A large stainless steel brewing canister can be seen toward the front of the laboratory, and would be used in the initial stages of agent production, analysts said. Large pistons are connected to a compressor atop a storage tank that would hold the growing product and maintain a certain pressure on the system required to grow the bio agent at an advanced rate. The agent would then be pumped into a large canister connected to several tanks that provide food from which the agent would feed, and which apply large amounts of fluid and temperature regulation for the contents of the holding canister. This feature is rarely set up in such a manner in ordinary labs, analysts told WorldNetDaily. The photos also reveal an industrial heating pump the width of almost the entire trailer. The size of the heating and cooling system was of particular interest to analysts, who said such systems would be used to superheat or supercool strong agents in a pressurized system. Iraqi defectors have reportedly told the U.S. that an accident on a similar trailer killed 12 during a production run in 1998. The incident, a report says, shows Iraq was producing [biological-weapons] agent at that time. The Iraqis later altered the design, installing the heating and cooling system visible in the photos to prevent overheating, an analyst said. Close-ups of the exterior portions of the trailer show several areas in which the steel plating of the unit, which is almost an inch thick, is dented, most likely during laboratory use and trailer transportation. Analysts said the back of the trailer could be attached to a secondary mobile unit that would collect the finished product for transportation. There are indications another trailer was dragged into this lab unit at the receiving end, which houses coils through which tubing would likely be placed for the agent to be pumped into a receiving canister. Several of the laboratory components have serial numbers that were traced to German companies, where some of the parts were manufactured. One device, a generator coming from one of the pumps, was made by General Electric. The trailer itself has a metal plaque that says it was manufactured in 2001 by Iraq's Al-Naser Al-Adheem - a munitions company controlled by Saddam Hussein - and inspected in 2002. A large collection and compression pipe is visible at the anterior section, which is not commonly used in regular laboratories and would find little use in the production of hydrogen. The system is designed to
Duelfer: Iraqi Intel Trained Iraqis, Other Arabs at Salman Pak, NYT
"[A] branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service known as M14, the directorate for special operations, oversaw a highly secretive enterprise known as the Challenge Project, involving explosives. A Pentagon intelligence report described by The New York Times in April detailed an operation in which Mr. Hussein's intelligence officers scattered, as American-led forces approached Baghdad, to lead the guerrilla insurgency and plan bombings and other attacks. "The report by Mr. Duelfer describes the M14 unit as having trained Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese, Egyptian and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism [??], explosives, marksmanship and foreign operations at its facilities at Salman Pak, near Baghdad." The URL for the above-mentioned NYT reportin April, along with a brief "Iraq News" note, is at the bottom of this article. Of course,this report raises the question of just when did M14 begin training Iraqis and other nationalities in these activities. The documents recently obtained by Cybernet News Service suggest thismay well besomething that goes back to the fall of 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait. New York Times October 8, 2004INTELLIGENCEInspector's Report Says Hussein Expected Guerrilla WarBy DOUGLAS JEHLWASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - On the eve of the American invasion in March 2003, Saddam Hussein instructed top Iraqi ministers to "resist one week, and after that I will take over.'' To his generals, Mr. Hussein's order was similar - to hold the American-led invaders for eight days, and leave the rest to him.Some of those who have recounted those words to interrogators believed at the time that Mr. Hussein was signaling that he had a secret weapon, according to an account spelled out in the new report by the top American arms inspector in Iraq. But what now appears most likely, the report said, is that "what Saddam actually had in mind was some form of insurgency against the coalition.''American intelligence agencies have reported since last fall that the broad outlines of the guerrilla campaign being waged against American forces in Iraq were laid down before the war by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. But the intimate picture spelled out in the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, provides an extraordinary glimpse of Mr. Hussein and his advisers on the eve of war, just three months after the Iraqi leader had finally told his aides that Iraq no longer possessed chemical weapons.As described by Mr. Duelfer, a deep apprehension among senior Iraqis over having to face the Americans with conventional arms alone competed with a conviction, at least on the part of Mr. Hussein, that the American advance could be slowed with the help of a popular uprising, and that those Iraqis who fled would be free to fight again.The report is drawn from extended interrogations not just of Mr. Hussein, but of many of his top deputies, including former Iraqi officials like Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister. From their prison cells, some of them, including Mr. Aziz, even responded in writing to the Americans' questions, in a process that Mr. Duelfer describes as completing homework assignments. The Duelfer report suggests that the American failure to anticipate the Iraqi insurgency was just one of several major misreadings of Mr. Hussein and his deputies.Among the disconnects cited in the report are some that portray the United States and Iraq as if they were in parallel universes. As late as March 16, 2003, the report says, three days before the war began, American intelligence services continued to receive reports from foreign services and other sources they regarded as credible saying that Mr. Hussein had decided to use chemical weapons against American troops in the event of war.In fact, Mr. Duelfer concludes, on the basis of the interviews with Iraqis, chemical weapons were never part of the Iraqi defense strategy because Mr. Hussein had conceded in December 2002 that he had none. What the United States believed to be an Iraqi "red line,'' beyond which an American advance would set off an Iraqi chemical-weapons reprisal, was instead merely part of a standard tactical doctrine, taught to all Iraqi officers, that included the concept of a last line of defense, the report says.The report does not offer a clear verdict on the extent to which the Iraqi insurgency that has raged for 18 months was planned. But it says that from August 2002 to January 2003, Army leaders at bases throughout Iraq were ordered to move and hide weapons and other military equipment at off-base locations, including farms and homes.A single sentence in an annex also confirms that a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service known as M14, the directorate for special operations, oversaw a highly secretive enterprise known as the Challenge Project, involving explosives. A Pentagon intelligence report described by The New York Times in April detailed an operation in
Saddam Aide in Syria Identified as Key Figure in Insurgency, Observer
Saddam aide in exile heads list of most wanted rebels A former Baathist based in Syria has been identified as the Mr Big behind terrorism Peter Beaumont Sunday October 17, 2004 The Observer A senior Baath party organiser and Saddam Hussein aide, Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, has been named by western intelligence officials as one of the key figures directing the Sunni insurgency from his hiding-place in neighbouring Syria. Sources have told The Observer that Younis al-Ahmed - who has had a $1 million price tag placed on his head by the US - is one of between 20 and 50 senior Baath party figures based in Syria who, they believe, are involved in organising the guerrilla war against the US-led multi-national forces in Iraq and against the new Iraqi security forces. The naming of Ahmed comes amid growing concern that hardline factions in Syria are providing protection for cells still loyal to the old Iraqi regime who were involved in organising the flow of money, people and material for fighters in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. This is despite Syrian moves to tighten up its border with Iraq after complaints from Washington and London that arms and foreign terrorists were crossing into Iraq. The intelligence officials believe the activities of the Syrian-based former regime members - who quickly formed into cells after the fall of Saddam - may be a considerably more significant threat to the interim government of Ayad Allawi than the more widely visible activities of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been behind a series of beheadings and suicide bombings. Before the $1m bounty was placed on his head, Ahmed, also known as 'Khadr al-Sabahi', had been travelling between Syria and the Sunni triangle to direct fighting and disburse funds. More recently, however, say sources, he has remained in Syria, choosing not to risk capture by crossing the border. The naming of Ahmed, and the allegation that he is basing himself permanently in Syria, seems designed to pressure the Syrian authorities to clamp down on the activities of ex-regime officials operating there. Little is known about Ahmed save that he was a senior regional Baath party organiser with links to Saddam's feared internal intelligence service, and there is some suggestion he may have received training in Moscow at some point. 'The main organisational strength behind the insurgency is Baathist military intelligence types who enjoy safe refuge in Syria,' said one official. 'So although Syria has clamped down on the border, they have not done anything about the planners and organisers. We are talking about 20-50 people who have access to funds, who know how to organise and use existing networks and are adept at reforming into cells.' The new assessment that former Baath party officials in hiding in Syria might, in reality, be more significant than Zarqawi and his foreign fighters, suggests an important change in emphasis in the understanding of the increasingly more violent insurgency. Zarqawi, some officials now believe, could not survive 'if he was not tolerated and exploited by the old Baathists'. The claim that Ahmed is continuing to direct the insurgency from inside Syria is a further embarrassment for the Anglophile President Bashar Assad, who has been keen to modernise his country. It follows an number of incidents of mortar-fire across the Syrian border towards US positions inside Iraq, most recently on Friday. And the disclosure of Ahmed's role from Syria comes amid growing concern in Baghdad and western capitals over the increasing evidence of destabilising external interference in Iraq's affairs. Both Arab and western diplomats admit that there is evidence of arms, money and fighters coming into Iraq from Saudi Arabia but that it is almost impossible to quantify at what level. Indeed, Saudi officials are as concerned with weapons coming into Saudi. The Saudis are also worried that a failed state in Iraq would allow terrorists to set up camps close to its vast border to target the kingdom. Officials believe Saudi money is helping to finance the jihadist groups in Iraq - like Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group - but are not certain what amounts are involved. And while UK forces have been brought in to help seal the smuggling routes in the desert areas that border Jordan, control of the Iraq-Saudi border area is complicated by the huge distances, awkward terrain and difficult helicopter flying conditions. Iranian factions, centred around the Republican Guards and religious leaders in Qom, have also been accused of financing of Iraqi Shia political and militia groups including the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr with the aim of 'pricking the US'. The disclosure, however, that it is largely regime officials who are leading and funding the insurgency, tapping into a widespread discontent among many Iraqis, will raise questions again over whether the resistance is conforming in large part to a plan prepared before the fall of Baghdad. 'The idea
Deroy Murdock, Hussein Terror, NRO
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October 20, 2004, 8:55 a.m.HusseinandTerror.comIntroducing a new resource.
Americans who still believe Saddam Hussein had
no ties to terrorists in general or al Qaeda in particular should visit husseinandterror.com. This website
is adapted from a speech I delivered on September 22 at Stanford
University's Hoover Institution. Husseinandterror.com includes photographs
of Baathist-supported terrorists, pictures of the mayhem they have
perpetrated, and portraits of those they have killed, including American
citizens. It offers disturbing proof that Saddam Hussein and his regime
operated a one-stop-shop for terrorists, including cash, diplomatic
assistance, safe haven, training, and even medical care.
Readers
may be startled to see, among other things, copies of checks given to the
families of Palestinian homicide bombers in Israel. Perhaps for the first
time (not the case for NRO readers), they will read the words of former
Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi explaining that terrorist Abu
Abbas ring leader of the October 1985 Achille Lauro
cruise-ship hijacking was freed from Italian custody because he traveled
on an Iraqi diplomatic passport.
There also is a web image of an online CBS
News story headlined, "Court Rules: Al Qaida, Iraq Linked." It
discusses a May 7, 2003 decision by Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge
Harold Baer Jr. to award the families of two September 11 victims $104
million in damages after their attorney proved that Saddam Hussein's
government provided "material support" to al Qaeda in the September 11
massacre. So much for Senator John Edwards's claim in the October 5
vice-presidential debate that "there is no connection between Saddam
Hussein and the attacks of September 11th period."
With the generous and able assistance of journalist, web designer, and
fellow Twin Towers rebuilding advocate Justin Berzon, I have backed this
evidence with 22 footnotes and suggestions for further reading on this
subject, including links to 15 of my previous writings on this topic, all
but one of them previously published on National Review Online.
The only mystery deeper than Osama bin Laden's home address is why the
White House never has assembled a website, brochure, DVD, or even a speech
presenting the overwhelming evidence of Saddam Hussein's philanthropy of
terror. Highlighting the clear and extensive links between Hussein and
global terrorists, including al Qaeda, would help Americans understand
this key rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Communicating this message
with Americans and audiences abroad would generate cheers rather than
jeers for President Bush's decision to lead more than 30 countries in
dislodging Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
While Team Bush discusses this vital issue in whispers, at best, I hope
husseinandterror.com will help Americans learn how Saddam Hussein operated
Grand Terror Terminal, and why handcuffing him last year was then, and
remains today, the right thing to have done.
http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200410200855.asp
Frank Gaffney, Blasts Levin Report/Idea that Iraq, al Qaida were Strangers, Wash Times
The Washington Times October 26, 2004 Hatchet job By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. For most of the 2004 campaign, Sen. John Kerry has been trying to obscure the true nature of his proclivities on defense and foreign policy matters. Voters have been given a timely reminder, however, by one of the Democratic candidate's colleagues and ideological soul-mates: Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. After all, Mr. Kerry has, according to the Wall Street Journal, indicated that Mr. Levin might be his choice for secretary of defense should he gain the White House. In this light, the virulently partisan attack launched last Thursday by the Michigan Democrat on President Bush and his administration - in the form of a preposterous screed against Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith - should be seen not only as a disqualifier for Mr. Levin's candidacy as a successor to Donald Rumsfeld. It also speaks volumes about Mr. Kerry's judgment that he would contemplate entrusting the Pentagon to such a left-wing ideologue. The essence of a report issued by Mr. Levin on Oct. 21 is that the Bush administration engaged in the politicization of intelligence, or, stated another way, the shaping of intelligence to support administration policy. It purports to show that in the case of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, intelligence was exaggerated to support administration policy aims primarily by the Feith policy office, which was determined to find a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, rather than by the IC [intelligence community], which was consistently dubious of such a connection. Lest the partisan purpose of this slander be lost on anyone, the New York Times hyperventilated in an editorial on Saturday: The Levin report is a primer on how intelligence can be cooked to fit a political agenda. ... Together with the 9/11 panel's findings and the Senate intelligence report, [it] show that those claims were all cooked up by Mr. Feith's shop, which knew that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had already shown them to be false. As it happens, the aforementioned Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report issued earlier this year arrived at a strikingly different conclusion. After investigating whether pre-war intelligence had been cooked by Mr. Feith's shop when it raised questions with the intelligence community about evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda, the committee unanimously declared: The committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to terrorism. Elsewhere, the SSCI went so far as to note, In some cases, those [intelligence community] analysts interviewed stated that the questions had forced them to go back and review intelligence reporting, and that during this exercise they came across information they had overlooked in initial readings. The committee found that this process - the policy-makers probing questions - actually improve the Central Intelligence Agency's products. Interestingly, Mr. Levin joined every other member of the intelligence committee in endorsing this report. Equally peculiar is the Levin charge that the intelligence community was consistently dubious about a connection between Iraq under Saddam and al Qaeda. In a letter sent on Oct. 7, 2002, by the CIA's director to the then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, George Tenet wrote: We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. In short, Mr. Feith's staff did in the run-up to war precisely what one would expect a policy organization to do: Evaluate and, where appropriate, challenge available intelligence about the threat that might make military operations necessary. And, having done so - as the SSCI found, through established channels - the Feith organization contributed accordingly to the development of policy. If anything, information that has emerged from liberated Iraq has made the Levin critique even more untenable. In the Oct. 19 edition of the New York Sun, Laurie Mylroie noted, for example, that an 11-page document [found in Iraq and] dated Jan. 25, 1993, lists various organizations with which Iraqi intelligence maintained contacts. It recommends 'the use of Arab Islamic elements which were fighting in Afghanistan and now have no place to go and who are currently in Somalia, Sudan and Egypt.' Saddam approved
James Dunnigan, Saddam's Spies Survive, StrategyPage.com
October 29, 2004 Saddam's Spies Surviveby James Dunnigan (URL at bottom) The Saddam era Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) is still in business. In Arabic, the IIS was called the Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma, and was more commonly known as the Mukhabarat (Arab for "Intelligence.") Combining the work of the American CIA, FBI and Secret Service, the IIS had a core strength of 5,000 highly trained, quite skilled, and very loyal (to Saddam) members. But the IIS controlled other intelligence and paramilitary personnel that totaled over 100,000 people. Few of these people were rounded up after Saddam's government fell in April, 2003. They are still out there. Most of them anyway. Thusands have been arrested for involvement in anti-government activities, and hundreds have been killed while carrying out terrorist or intelligence operations. The IIS are almost entirely Sunni Arabs, and they are the core of the violence and terrorism the Iraqi government has had to deal with for the last 18 months. The IIS, a CIA report recently revealed, had several departments that specialized in developing weapons and tactics for the kind of war Saddam loyalists are fighting now. There was even one department that did nothing but develop road side bombs. These devices, which are assembled from various types of explosives (including artillery shells), and fitted into a large number of disguises (concrete blocks, trucks tires, piles of rubbish), were not a sudden inspiration, after Saddam's defeat, of hostile Iraqis, but the deliberate invention of the IIS. It was discovered, shortly after Saddam was run out of office in early 2003, that the IIS had some kind of plan to keep on fighting. American intelligence personnel (military and CIA), slowly put together the details of the IIS plan. It wasn't just about designs for road side bombs, but also all manner of tactics and techniques on how to keep the fighting going. When Saddam was in power, the IIS also was in charge of smuggling goods into Iraq (past the UN embargo), and maintaining agents in neighboring countries to watch over these activities. That is why the flow of people, money and weapons from Syria appeared so quickly after Saddam's was thrown out of power. The system was already in place. The Sunni Arabs don't just believe that they can use terror and violence to regain power in Iraq, they carefully planned how to do it while they were still in charge.http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/2004102923.asp
Mylroie, The Iraqi Connection, NYT Book Review Letters
New York Times Sunday Book Review November 14, 2004 Letters The Iraqi Connection To the Editor: In his review of ''The Connection: How Al Qaeda's Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America,'' by Stephen F. Hayes (Sept. 19), Gideon Rose dismisses my work. It is far more substantial than Rose suggests. Fundamental anomalies exist in the official United States explanation for the mega-terrorist plots, starting with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and culminating in 9/11. Above all, the masterminds of those attacks are said to be a family: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and at least four nephews (including Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 bombing). These individuals are Baluch, a Sunni Muslim people living along the Iranian-Pakistani border. The United States has had virtually nothing to do with them, and they have no evident motive for these assaults -- save that Iraq had extensive ties with the Baluch, using them as spies and saboteurs in its earlier conflict with Iran's Shiite regime. No other major terrorist group has a family at its core. This family was supposedly born and raised in Kuwait. Their identities are based on Kuwaiti documents that predate Kuwait's liberation in 1991. It is at least possible that these identities were falsified, as Iraq had custody of those documents, while it occupied Kuwait. Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, senior officials in the New York office of the F.B.I. believed Iraq was behind the attack. Reports in The New York Times hinted at an Iraqi connection. Rose (and others) might do well to review that material, before cavalierly dismissing the possibility of Iraq's involvement with this family that twice attacked the Trade Center towers. Laurie Mylroie Washington
Iraq Got $21 Billion from Oil for Food, NYT
New York Times November 16, 2004 THE OIL-FOR-FOOD PROGRAM Panel Pegs Illicit Iraq Earnings at $21.3 Billion By JUDITH MILLER WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - A Senate committee investigating the United Nations oil-for-food program for Iraq estimates that during 13 years of international sanctions, Saddam Hussein's government made at least $21.3 billion illicitly - more than double previous government estimates. Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said at a subcommittee hearing on Monday that he doubted that fraud and abuse on this scale could have gone undetected by senior United Nations officials or their American counterparts. Because it was unknown where the illicit money ended up, he said, he was worried that it may be helping to finance the insurgency in Iraq. The United Nations aid program for Iraq ran from 1996 to 2003, easing some of the effects of the sanctions by allowing the country to make monitored sales of oil and use the money to purchase aid like food and medicine. Since then, there has been growing evidence that Mr. Hussein's government exploited the program with a campaign of illicit oil sales, illegal surcharges and kickbacks, as well as bribes aimed at lifting sanctions. Senator Coleman said the huge scale of fraud and theft while United Nations penalties were in effect had created a dark stain over the world organization that raised questions about whether it could put in place and monitor any sanctions. Questions about how much money was siphoned away from the oil-for-food program, and the money's ultimate use, were particularly troubling, he added, because of allegations that Benon V. Sevan, who was in charge of the United Nations program, had benefited from special allocations of oil from Mr. Hussein. Mr. Sevan has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. However, Charles A. Duelfer, the top American weapons investigator in Iraq, who was the Senate panel's first witness, told the committee on Monday that based on Iraqi documents and what Iraqi officials had told him, he believed that Mr. Sevan had been given 13 million barrels of oil in special oil allocations. The subcommittee's new higher estimates of Iraq's illicit gains are based on evaluations of earlier studies by the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon, the Congressional Budget Office and Mr. Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, along with new information and a million pages of documents secured by the Senate panel over its seven-month investigation. Specifically, the panel estimated that Iraq made $3.9 billion from oil smuggling before the oil-for-food program was created in 1996; $4.4 billion in kickbacks on aid contracts; $241 million in illegal surcharges on the sale of Iraqi oil; $2.1 billion from the sales of substandard goods under the program; $9.7 billion from oil smuggling under the program; $405 million from abuses in aid contracts in the northern, mostly Kurdish, part of Iraq that Mr. Hussein did not directly control; and $403 million from the investment of its illicit income overseas. The documents, some of which were released Monday, also show how Iraqi officials, foreign companies, politicians and journalists benefited from Mr. Hussein's efforts to undermine support for sanctions and secretly gain money to build palaces and buy weapons. Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the panel's ranking minority member, said three-quarters of Iraq's illicit income came from trade protocols with Jordan and Turkey that the Clinton and Bush administrations had known about and winked at because support from those countries was vital. But Mr. Duelfer, in testimony before the Senate panel, insisted that although the protocols provided Iraq with illicit income, Mr. Hussein was successfully using illegal proceeds specifically from the oil-for-food program to undermine support for the sanctions that the United Nations imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Mark L. Greenblatt, a counsel for the Senate panel, said that beginning in 1998, Mr. Hussein had tried to manipulate the typical oil allocation process in order to gain influence throughout the world. Rather than let traditional oil companies buy oil, he said, Mr. Hussein gave oil allocations to officials, journalists and even terrorists, who then sold their allocations to the traditional oil companies in return for a sizable commission. A document released Monday showed such payments to a Syrian journalist, Hamidah Nana, who said in an interview in 2003 that she was working hard to get sanctions against Iraq lifted. When Ms. Nana made the statement, Mr. Greenblatt said, she had already received oil allocations totaling 10 million to 12 million barrels of oil, and had made a profit, according to Iraq's Oil Ministry, of $1.4 million from transfer of the vouchers to a Panama-based company. Steven Groves, another of the subcommittee's counsels, said documents showed that Mr. Hussein
Clarice Feldman, The CIA's war on Bush, The American Thinker
The CIA's war on BushNovember 17th, 2004 The Central Intelligence Agency, far from supporting the War on Terror, became an obstacle to the inplementation of the policies of the United States government. At last, this situation may be corrected.In Bush v. the Beltway, Laurie Mylroie detailed the sabotage of the Bush Administration and its policies by opponents buried in the CIA and elsewhere. We have seen that effort at undermining continue more overtly and more viciously, culminating in this week's leaks against Porter Goss and his efforts at institutional reform of the Agency.On one level this conduct may be viewed as personal animus or political infighting. But it has been designed to make it difficult for the Bush Administration to articulate coherently its justification for the war in Iraq, and even to fight it .On its own, and without notifying the White House it was doing so, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate a report of yellowcake sales to Iraq. He was a man with no experience in WMD, and he returned with only an oral report, not conveyed to the White House in a timely fashion. When he sprang his counterclaim to the Bush assertion that Saddam had sought to buy yellowcake in Africa, and later falsely said the Bush claim had been based on forged documents (the Frenchforged documents, as it turns out, but they were not the basis for the claims of the Administration), the White House was caught off guard. In response to Robert Novak's question about the choice of Wilson for this task, Administration officials replied that Wilson had been selected at his wife's suggestion. Someone, probably at the CIA, told Novakthat Plame was an agent. Who revealed this secret information and why is unknown. Incredibly, instead of an internal inquiry into the outing of one of its agents, the CIA director asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether there had been a leak at the White House, an investigation still ongoing, and one which -- as Novak's own articlesuggests -- will point right back at the very agency which made the request in the first place. In the meantime, Wilson became the Bush critic de jour, at least until the 9/11 Commission discredited him. Welcomed at the height of the flap to the warm bosom of the Kerry camp, he was then scrubbed from its web page and consigned to a well-deserved oblivion, at least among those who saw the few press notices of his disgrace.Equally breathtaking was the erstwhile grant to "Anonymous", a CIA analyst, permission to publish his policy critique of the Administration, Imperial Hubris. Hubris, indeed has its limits, however, When he tried to lend the public his scathing views of the Agency's policies and practices, that permission was withheld and he left.Beneath these obvious perfidies was a great deal that was slightly less obvious: the daily press reports attacking or questioning the Bush Administration, based on information leaked from the CIA. Readers who approached these stories as objects of study noted the fact that behind virtually every damaging tale was an "anonymous CIA official" -- from the preposterous claim that Ahmed Chalabi was spying for Iran to some of the disastrous predicted post-war situations in Iraq, these stories found their way to the nation's front pages and evening news broadcasts.Aside from the intended political damage to President Bush, these leaks had a much more serious effect: they made it difficult for his administration to articulate publicly its reasons for invading Iraq, and to properly engage the enemy.Virtually every time the Administration mentioned an Iraqi link to al Qaeda or to 9/11, Agency saboteurs would leak contrary information (and there always is some that is the nature of intelligence work). The most easily demonstrated case involves 9/11 ring leader Mohammed Atta's trip to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent prior to 9/11. The Czechs insist this meeting took place. No one can place Atta anywhere else at that time. When the 9/11 Commission considered this -- in passing -- someone in the CIA conveyed to it the information that calls from Atta's cell phone showed he was in Florida at the time. Of course, it was far from impossible for him to have left the phone in Florida and for someone else to have used it. But we are talking about an Agency which missed altogether the Libyan nuclear program, assured the President that finding WMDs was a "slam dunk", and thought that Saddam was hidden in a non-existent bunker at the onset of the war. The major media reported the CIA-provided information as fact, neglecting altogether the more credible Tenet and Cheney testimony that we don't know if he was in Prague at that date or not. Frankly, the evidencethat he was is stronger than the claim that he wasn't.Even more significantly, there has been an ongoing under-the-table
Saddam's Bank Accounts, NY Post
NEW YORK POST November 19, 2004 SADDAM 'BANKED' ON FRAUD By NILES LATHEM WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein laundered illegal profits from the U.N. oil-for-food program through as many as 2,400 bank accounts, according to new information obtained by investigators. The Treasury Department reported to a House committee that accounts were kept in 41 countries at the height of Saddam's under-the-table wheeling and dealing. More than 1,600 of those accounts were based in Jordan. They were one-time accounts used for a single transaction and then either abandoned or shut down, according to investigators of the House International Relations Committee. Investigators say they are only just beginning to understand the serpentine trail of secret bank accounts and front companies that were used by Iraq. In one case, congressional probers found that a Scottish company, the Weir Group, was told by Iraq to inflate the value of an earlier bid by 13 percent for the sale of industrial valves and pumps for oil. Saddam was allowed to sell limited amounts of oil to purchase food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. But Senate investigators estimate Saddam ripped off $21.3 billion from the program through oil smuggling and demanding kickbacks from oil traders and suppliers of humanitarian aid. Saddam is accused of using those profits to buy banned weapons systems, bribe international political figures, pay cash rewards to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and enrich his cronies. More than $6 billion is believed to be still missing -and possibly is being used to finance the Iraq rebellion. Sources told The Post that federal and congressional investigators are increasingly focusing attention on Jordan, the center of many of Saddam's oil-for-food scams as well as growing Iraqi rebel activity. A high-ranking Iraqi official revealed his government has intelligence that Jordan is increasingly becoming a financing and logistical base for ex-regime Ba'athists. They represent the best organized of the anti-U.S. militant groups in Iraq.
Robert Novak, CIA: 'Dysfunctional' and 'rogue'
CIA: 'Dysfunctional' and 'rogue' Robert Novak Townhall.com November 18, 2004 WASHINGTON -- After President Bush nominated him to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Rep. Porter Goss walked across the Capitol to meet with a senator he hardly knew and who had criticized him: John McCain. There he received advice confirming his determination to take a course that soon became the talk of Washington. McCain told Goss the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a dysfunctional organization. It has to be cleaned out. That is, the CIA does not perform its missions. McCain told Goss that as DCI, he must get rid of the old boys and bring in a new team at Langley. Moreover, McCain told me this week, with CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization. Following a mandate from the president for what McCain advised, Goss is cleaning house. The reaction from the old boys confirms those harsh adjectives of dysfunctional and rogue. The nation's capital has become an echo chamber of anti-Goss invective with CIA officials painting a picture for selected reporters of a lightweight House member from Florida, a mere case officer at the CIA long ago, provoking high-level resignations and dismantling a great intelligence service. Veteran CIA-watchers such as McCain regard the Agency as anything but great and commend Goss for taking courageous steps that previous DCIs avoided. George Friedman, head of the Stratfor private intelligence service, refers to Goss's housecleaning as long overdue. That cleansing process has been inhibited by the CIA's fear factor as an extraordinary leak machine. Its efficiency was attested to when Goss appointed Michael V. Kostiw, recently staff director of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism, as the CIA's executive director. Before Kostiw could check in at Langley, the old boys leaked information that Kostiw was caught shoplifting in 1981 after 10 years as a CIA case officer. Kostiw then resigned the Agency's third-ranking post, though Goss retained him as a special assistant. Kostiw's treatment has enraged people who have known him during a long, successful career in Washington -- including John McCain. The senator called Kostiw one of the finest, most decent men I have ever met. The story fed by Goss's enemies in the Agency is that dedicated career intelligence officers have been replaced by Capitol Hill hacks. Their real fear is that Goss will put an end to the CIA running its own national security policy, which in the last campaign resulted in an overt attempt to defeat Bush for re-election (intensifying after George Tenet left as DCI ). I reported on Sept. 27 that Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told a private dinner on the West Coast of secret, unheeded warnings to Bush about going to war. I learned of this because of leaks from people who attended, but many other senior Agency officials were covertly but effectively campaigning for Sen. John Kerry. That effort seemed to include Imperial Hubris, an anonymously published attack on Iraq War policy by CIA analyst Michael Scheuer. He has since left the Agency, but he was still on the payroll when the CIA allowed the book to be published. The Washington Post on Election Day quoted Scheuer as saying CIA officials muzzled him in July only after they realized that he was really criticizing them, not the president. As long as the book was being used to bash the president, he said, they gave me carte blanche to talk to the media. Traditional bipartisanship in intelligence has been the victim, with Democrats cheering the CIA Bush-bashing. Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, abandoned pretense of bipartisanship, and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Senate committee's vice chairman, never pretended. Both are attacking their former colleague who is now DCI. McCain's use of the word rogue carries historical implications. A long, debilitating time of troubles began for the CIA in 1975 after Sen. Frank Church called it a rogue elephant that is out of control causing trouble around the world. The current use of the word refers to the intelligence agency playing domestic politics, which is an even more disturbing aberration. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20041118.shtml
CIA Launches Raids on INC, INC News Release
INC News Release CIA Launches Raids on INC BAGHDAD (20 November): The Iraqi National Congress today announced that the US Central Intelligence Agency led raids on four INC facilities recently. Three INC offices in Baghdad were attacked on Thursday and the INC office in Najaf was attacked last week by heavily armed US civilians accompanied by masked Iraqis. The offices were vandalized, a number of staff were assaulted, and equipment and documents were stolen. Staff members who requested to see search warrants were beaten and abused and no warrants were produced. CIA operatives in Iraq are out of control and are operating outside the bounds of American and Iraqi law. The CIA is failing in its duty to protect US forces and the Iraqi people from terrorists and is attacking groups and individuals who point out its failures. The INC will take action in the Iraqi legal system to force the CIA and its Iraqi agents to act within the law. The INC appeals to the US government to stop the CIA from engaging in political vendettas and rededicate itself to fighting America's true enemies. Contact: Entifadh Qanbar [EMAIL PROTECTED] telephone +1-914-360-3875
Thomas Joscelyn, Scheuer's Schizophrenia on Iraq, Weekly Standard, Iraq News note
NB: "Iraq News" is somewhat skeptical of the claim that UBL actively sought WMD, while he was based in Sudan.That seems to have come later, after UBL moved to Afghanistan in 1996. That said, this is a most interesting article, including for the blatant contradictions between the positions Michael Scheuer took in his first book, published in June 2002, and subsequently. Now You Don't Tell Us From the November 29, 2004 issue: What the CIA's bin Laden expert used to say about Iraq's al Qaeda ties. by Thomas Joscelyn 11/29/2004ON NOVEMBER 14, 60 Minutes aired a segment with Michael Scheuer, who made headlines after resigning from the CIA to pursue his second career as a critic of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Scheuer was the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit (codenamed "Alec") from 1996 to 1999. With the publication this past summer of his "anonymous" book Imperial Hubris, he became a media star, giving countless interviews as "one of the CIA's foremost authorities on Osama bin Laden." Out of government, he appears poised to become a regular pundit. His appearance on 60 Minutes was followed two days later by appearances on Chris Matthews's Hardball on MSNBC and Aaron Brown's NewsNight on CNN. During his appearance on 60 Minutes (and his follow-up interviews), Scheuer warned that al Qaeda's detonating a weapon of mass destruction on American soil was "pretty close to being inevitable." When asked what type of weapon al Qaeda could detonate, Scheuer responded that it would be "a nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device . . . it's probably a near thing." Such dire predictions call to mind warnings that both Presidents Clinton and Bush have made about the dangers of WMD in the hands of terrorists. Scheuer says also that within the first year of the "Alec" unit's existence, he learned that bin Laden and al Qaeda "were involved in an extraordinarily sophisticated and professional effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In this case, nuclear material, so by the end of 1996, it was clear that this was an organization unlike any other one we had ever seen." Did bin Laden receive any outside assistance in his effort to acquire a nuclear capability? Scheuer did not say. Nor did 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft or any of the other interviewers ask. But Scheuer did consider this question two years ago, and his answer was yes, bin Laden did receive outside help--from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Does Scheuer agree with the case for the war in Iraq more than he is letting on? Scheuer's 2002 book, Through Our Enemies' Eyes offered startling conclusions regarding Saddam Hussein's willingness to assist al Qaeda's effort to obtain nuclear weapons. "In pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, bin Laden has focused on the FSU [Former Soviet Union] states and has sought and received help from Iraq," wrote Scheuer. In fact, bin Laden's "first moves in this direction were made in cooperation with NIF [Sudan's National Islamic Front] leaders, Iraq's intelligence service, and Iraqi CBRN [chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear] scientists and technicians." Through Our Enemies' Eyes pointed to evidence indicating a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda beginning in the early 1990s. And "there is information," Scheuer wrote, "showing that in the 1993-1994 period bin Laden began work with Sudan and Iraq to acquire a CBRN capability for al Qaeda." These efforts were far-reaching, according to Scheuer, who cited open-source reporting and other evidence--mostly from the late 1990s--to support the claim that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on multiple projects. Areas of cooperation included everything from assistance in the development of chemical and biological weapons facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan, to the possible training of al Qaeda operatives at Mujahedeen Khalq training camps in Iraq starting in June 1998 (the "MEK" was an anti-Iranian terrorist group sponsored by Saddam), to the possibility that MEK operatives (under Saddam's direction) provided "technical and military training for the Taliban's forces" as well as "running the Taliban's anti-Iran propaganda." In Through Our Enemies' Eyes, Scheuer also reported on bin Laden's relationship with the former deputy director of Iraq's intelligence service, Faruq Hijazi. Scheuer approvingly cited evidence of meetings between bin Laden and Hijazi, whom Saddam made responsible for "nurturing Iraq's ties to [Islamic] fundamentalist warriors," in June 1994 and again in December 1998. During their first meeting in Sudan, Scheuer wrote, Hijazi and bin Laden "developed a good rapport that would 'flourish' in the late 1990s." Hijazi was not a low-level flunky; he was one of Saddam's most trusted intelligence operatives. A close relationship between Hijazi and bin Laden suggests there is far more to the
Fallujah Bomb Labs, Wash Times, Iraq News note
NB: This piece explains that chemicals for making hydrogen cyanide were found in Fallujah. Some FBI agents who investigated the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center believed that that bomb was meant to produce hydrogen cyanide, but the material was burnt up in the heat of the explosion. In fact, in the sentencing hearing for the defendants in the first WTC bombing trial, that is what the judge charged. Iraqi bomb labs signal attacks in the works By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES November 30, 2004 Chemicals and bomb-making literature found at two houses in Fallujah, Iraq, last week show Iraqi rebels are prepared to use chemical and biological weapons in future attacks, a U.S. military spokesman said yesterday. Rebels in Fallujah had materials for making chemical blood agents and also a cookbook on how to produce a deadly form of anthrax, said Army Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan in a telephone interview. Col. Boylan said there are no signs to date that the terrorists actually used chemical or biological weapons in homemade bombs that the military calls improvised explosive devices (IEDs). But this definitely shows that they had the intent and willingness to go down that road, he said. The intent is there to at least make it and potentially to use it. A U.S. military team trained to handle chemical weapons removed the materials and equipment, and testing is under way, Col. Boylan said. The two houses in Fallujah were used by terrorists linked to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al Qaeda-linked leader who is behind many of the suicide bombings and attacks against Iraqi civilians and U.S. military personnel, Col. Boylan said. Iraqi security forces and the U.S. military uncovered one chemical and bomb-making factory Wednesday, Col. Boylan said. A day later, a second residence was found with bomb-making and chemical-weapons material in another part of the city, he said. The chemical lab was found during house-to-house searches of the city, where some 2,000 terrorists and former fighters for Saddam Hussein's regime were killed in recent battles. The chemical labs had cookbooks that had formulas for making explosives, Col. Boylan said. One of them had directions on how to make anthrax. One of them had ingredients and directions on how to make blood agent. Chemicals for the blood agent hydrogen cyanide that were found included potassium cyanide and hydrochloric acid, he said. Hydrogen cyanide, which affects the blood, is extremely poisonous and can be used as a weapon in both vapor and liquid form. In addition to chemical-weapons materials, the troops uncovered other bomb-making materials in the residence, including ammonium nitrate and military explosives that are used in making roadside and vehicle bombs, he said. It is believed the Fallujah rebels had planned to lace their improvised bombs with hydrogen cyanide, he said. Soldiers also found testing kits labeled Soman, Sarin and V-Gases, which are used to test for the presence of chemical nerve agents. The kits contained vials labeled in English, Russian and German that read, For working instructions, refer to the instructions leaflet. Col. Boylan noted that the chemical weapons are indiscriminate terror weapons that were to be used against Iraqi civilians as well as against U.S., Iraqi and allied troops. He said Fallujah has been neutralized as a center for terrorist bombing operations by the U.S. military's ongoing operation there. We're finding tons of weapons -- caches with hundreds of weapons, ammunition, IEDs and factories, he said. These locations were being used to do nothing but fabricate IEDs and other weapons. He noted that Fallujah is considered the single largest place for weapons and explosives used by rebels in Iraq. We're still going house to house in Fallujah, he said. Troops are fighting to clear buildings of insurgents, but we still have pockets [of resistance] and sporadic fighting as they find holdouts, and that's to be expected, Col. Boylan said. It's not an easy process. It's a slow, methodical process that once completed will have cleared the city of insurgents, he said. Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud said last week that the chemical laboratory was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons.
Saddam Raided UN Sites for Suicide Attacks, Independent
Independent Saddam 'raided UN arms sites for suicide attacks' By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad 01 December 2004 As American forces closed in on Baghdad last year, senior members of Saddam Hussein's government devised a plan to send suicide bombers in vehicles packed with devastating high-energy explosives that were under UN safeguards. The disappearance of the explosive, known as HMX (high melting explosives), in mysterious circumstances at the end of the war caused a few nasty moments for President George Bush's presidential election campaign last month. A letter to Saddam from Dr Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, five days before the fall of Baghdad, suggests taking the HMX from underground bunkers, where it had been kept under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and giving it to suicide bombers. He wrote: It is possible to increase the explosive power of the suicide-driven cars by using the highly explosive material [HMX] which is sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] and stored in the warehouses of the Military Industry Departments. The Iraqi regime took credit for several suicide bombs towards the end of the war. After the fall of Saddam, one of the worst attacks - which killed 22 UN workers and the special envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, in August 2003 - had an explosive force that could only have come from military grade explosives. The disappearance of 350 tons of explosives, including 191 tons of HMX, at the time of the war in April last year became a crucial issue in the last weeks of the US presidential election campaign. John Kerry portrayed the failure to secure the explosives, which could have been used to kill US soldiers, as a symbol of Mr Bush's incompetence in Iraq. It now appears that senior officials in the Iraqi government were discussing the removal of the HMX before the fall of Saddam. The letter from Dr Sabri, obtained by The Independent, was sent on 4 April 2003 as US tanks were advancing on Baghdad. It said that the world was getting the impression that Iraqi civilians were co-operating with American soldiers. Dr Sabri suggested that the best way of preventing US troops getting too close to Iraqi civilians was to target their vehicle checkpoints with suicide operations by civilian vehicles in order to make the savage Americans realise that their contact with Iraqi civilians is as dangerous as facing them on the battlefield. In the last weeks of the US presidential campaign, the Iraqi interim government told the IAEA that the explosives had disappeared from the Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad. The materials were believed to have disappeared after the fall of Baghdad on 9 April because of the failure of US troops to secure them. The mystery of what happened to the explosives may now be partly resolved by Dr Sabri's letter. Because of the special nature of the explosives, the IAEA had placed them under seal in storage bunkers before the war. The foreign ministry would have known what was stored there because it dealt with the IAEA and its monitors. There is no proof that the Iraqi presidency acted on the suggestion but there were a number of suicide bomb attacks on US checkpoints at the time. American soldiers now open fire on any car coming towards them that they deem suspicious. Many civilians have been killed. The letter was given to The Independent by Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, in Baghdad yesterday. He said it was found in the ministry's archives. There is no reason to doubt its authenticity. The interim Iraqi government may have known about it for some time but was nervous about releasing it at a moment when it might be accused of intervening in the US presidential election. The letter, marked confidential and immediate, was sent to Saddam's all-powerful secretary, Abed Hamoud. Advice on making an unconventional military attack might have been expected from the security services. But it may have been that Dr Sabri, unsure about how long the war would last, wanted to show his his loyalty to Saddam. He fled Iraq and lives in Doha, the Qatari capital.
US: Syria Aids Iraq Rebels, WaPo
Rebels Aided By Allies in Syria, U.S. Says Baathists Reportedly Relay Money, Support By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 8, 2004; Page A01 U.S. military intelligence officials have concluded that the Iraqi insurgency is being directed to a greater degree than previously recognized from Syria, where they said former Saddam Hussein loyalists have found sanctuary and are channeling money and other support to those fighting the established government. Based on information gathered during the recent fighting in Fallujah, Baghdad and elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle, the officials said that a handful of senior Iraqi Baathists operating in Syria are collecting money from private sources in Saudi Arabia and Europe and turning it over to the insurgency. In some cases, evidence suggests that these Baathists are managing operations in Iraq from a distance, the officials said. A U.S. military summary of operations in Fallujah noted recently that troops discovered a global positioning signal receiver in a bomb factory in the western part of the city that contained waypoints originating in western Syria. Concerns about Syria's role in Iraq were also expressed in interviews The Washington Post conducted yesterday with Jordan's King Abdullah and Iraqi President Ghazi Yawar. There are people in Syria who are bad guys, who are fugitives of the law and who are Saddam remnants who are trying to bring the vicious dictatorship of Saddam back, Yawar said. They are not minding their business or living a private life. They are . . . disturbing or undermining our political process. Abdullah noted that the governments of both the United States and Iraq believe that foreign fighters are coming across the Syrian border that have been trained in Syria. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have previously complained about Syria's role in Iraq, but officials said the latest intelligence has given impetus to new efforts aimed at curbing the activities of the Hussein loyalists there. The U.S. government recently gave the government of Syria a list of those officials, with a request that they be arrested or expelled, a State Department official said yesterday. We're bringing quite a bit of pressure to bear on them, and I think some of it is working, said another official, who works in federal counterterrorism efforts. Like other officials interviewed for this article, he declined to be identified by name or position because of the sensitivity of his specialty. One briefing slide in a classified summary of new intelligence data also says that new diplomatic initiatives are being used to encourage the Syrian government to detain or expel the Iraqi Baathists. The Syrians appear to have done a little bit to stem extremist infiltration into Iraq at the border, but clearly have not helped with regards to Baathists infiltrating back and forth, said a senior U.S. military officer in the region. We still have serious challenges there, and Syria needs to be doing a lot more. The Syrian ambassador to the United States emphatically rejected the accusations as unfounded. There is a sinister campaign to create an atmosphere of hostility against Syria, said Imad Moustapha, the envoy. He said his government categorically denies that Iraqi Baathists are taking refuge in his country. We don't allow this to happen, he said. Iraqi officials were never welcome. As described by defense officials, new intelligence on the insurgency suggests some other emerging problems, such as how extensively U.S. operations in Iraq have been penetrated by members of the insurgency and by people sympathetic to it. The Green Zone in central Baghdad, home of the U.S. Embassy and the offices of the interim Iraqi government, is especially overrun with agents, said one Defense Department official who recently returned from Iraq. One activity that has been noticed is that when major convoys leave the zone, Iraqi cell phone calls from the zone seem to increase, he said. An additional concern is that the insurgency seems to be using some Iraqi companies to get into U.S. bases, he said. Jeffrey White, a former Middle Eastern analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the Syrian role is part of what many intelligence officials believe are the increasingly organized attacks on U.S. forces. In the last two months or so, this notion that this is a Baathist insurgency has gained dominance in the [intelligence] community, he said. Coupled with that, he said, there is an increasing view that Syria is at the center of the problem. Not everyone with first-hand knowledge of the intelligence is convinced that the United States really has a strong grasp of the nature of the insurgency, especially the idea that the insurgency is being directed from the top down. Some Special Forces officers contend that many of the small-scale roadside attacks with bombs or rocket-propelled grenades are mounted not on orders of a
Gen. Casey: Insurgents Directed by Ba'thists in Syria, WaPo
Washington Post General: Iraqi Insurgents Directed From Syria By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer December 17, 2004 A top Army general said yesterday that the Iraqi insurgency was being run in part by former senior Iraqi Baath Party officials operating in Syria who call themselves the New Regional Command. These men, from the former governing party of deposed president Saddam Hussein, are operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency, said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. commander in Iraq. That needs to stop, Casey said at a Pentagon briefing. He called on the government of President Bashar Assad to do more to stop the insurgency from being managed by Iraqis hiding in Syria. The Syrians are making some efforts on the border, he said. But they are not going after the big fish, which is really the people that we're interested in. And we're really interested in them going after the senior Baathists. Casey's comments echoed remarks by President Bush on Wednesday but provided new details, including the name of the leadership organization in Syria. In recent weeks, new intelligence on anti-U.S. forces in Iraq has led officials to focus increasingly on the sanctuary being provided there. Casey contrasted his view of Syria's role with what he described as the more distant threat presented by Iran. The Iranian government's influence on Iraq needs to be watched, he said, but does not appear to pose a major problem in affecting next month's elections. I don't see substantial Iranian influence on this particular government that will be elected in January, he said. I see Iran as more of a longer-term threat to Iraqi security . . . a long-term threat to stability in Iraq. If you look on the other side, I think Syria is a short-term threat, because of the support they provide to the former Baathist leaders that we see operating in and out of Syria. Overall, Casey expressed optimism about the security situation in Iraq. I feel that we're broadly on track in helping the Iraqi people complete their transition to a constitutionally elected government at the end of next year, he said. We also believe that this objective is both realistic and achievable. He said the strength of the Iraqi insurgency should not be overestimated. They're a tough, aggressive enemy, but they're not 10 feet tall, he said. The three areas that will be major priorities for strengthening the Iraqi government, he said, are intelligence functions, local policing and border patrols.
Iraq Election System Flawed, NYT
New York Times January 9, 2005 U.S. Is Haunted by Initial Plan for Iraq Voting By STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - In its struggle to transfer sovereignty back to Iraq last spring, the Bush administration made some tough decisions about the makeup of the political system and how Iraqi elections could occur quickly and fairly. But now a little-noticed decision on election procedures has come back to haunt administration officials, just weeks before the vote is to take place, administration and United Nations officials say. The fundamental decision set up one nationwide vote for a new national assembly, rather than elections by districts and provinces. With a violent insurgency spreading through the Sunni Arab areas of the country, it now looks as if fewer Sunnis will vote, distorting the balance of the legislature and casting doubt on whether the election will be seen as legitimate. According to officials planning the election, the decision was driven by the realities of an unstable Iraq and the unrelenting pressure to speed the country to a vote by the end of January 2005, as demanded by many Iraqis. To make that deadline, it was believed, there was no time to conduct a census or go through the politically divisive chore of drawing district lines. A national constituency also made it easier to meet the demands of the former exiles installed in power in Baghdad to let millions of Iraqis living outside the country vote, and the demands of others to ensure that 25 percent of the legislators were women. The experts reasoned that it would be much easier to find women for slates running nationwide than for each of many smaller districts. We looked at a lot of alternatives and presented them to the Iraqis and everyone else, said an official involved in the decision-making process. Basically, a nationwide constituency solved a lot of problems and made our lives a lot easier. But now, with the violent insurgency and more than 7,000 candidates, many in alliances with other candidates, running for 275 seats nationwide, the disadvantages of the current system are becoming all too apparent, according to American, Iraqi and United Nations officials. For one thing, these officials say, there is no possibility of postponing the election selectively in those districts gripped by the insurgency. For another, the expected low turnout in perhaps a fifth of the country, where the Sunni minority lives, will presumably lessen the chances of candidates who are popular there. This problem is discouraging Sunnis from running or campaigning, and a failure of these candidates to win proportionate to their share of Iraq's population, could easily reinforce the Sunnis' alienation from the Shiite majority. Thus an election intended to bring Iraq together and quell the insurgency could produce the opposite outcome, in part because of the way it has been organized. In a speech last week at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington, Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser of President George H. W. Bush and an increasingly vocal critic of the war, warned of the danger of the election worsening the conflict. The Iraqi elections, rather than turning out to be a promising turning point, have the great potential for deepening the conflict, he said. The problem of underrepresentation of Sunnis in a future legislature has already stirred talk among Americans, Iraqis and United Nations officials of making adjustments after the voting. Among the ideas being discussed are simply adding seats to the 275-member legislature, or guaranteeing that the future government or constitution-writing committees have a fixed percentage of Sunni representatives. The decision to set up the election this way was made by L. Paul Bremer III late in his tenure as the American administrator in Iraq. His aides say the decision was urged on him by United Nations experts who argued that there was no other way to ensure elections quickly. The decision was discussed in Washington, but it is not clear whether it was formally approved at the White House. It was overshadowed by other decisions by Mr. Bremer, particularly his efforts to persuade Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, to put the elections off until January. But the national-constituency choice is now rued by at least some members of Mr. Bremer's team. It was well-intentioned, but it was a mistake, said Larry Diamond, a former adviser who is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. It's clear now that one of the major concerns motivating the Sunni boycott is their fear that they'll wind up severely underrepresented under this system. Another former adviser to Mr. Bremer, Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argues further that the system favors the dominant Shiite parties with national organizations over local candidates known only in their areas. This in
Allawi Group Slips Reporters Cash, FT
Financial Times Allawi group slips cash to reporters By Steve Negus in Baghdad Published: January 10 2005 22:01 The electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, on Monday handed out cash to journalists to ensure coverage of its press conferences in a throwback to Ba'athist-era patronage ahead of parliamentary elections on January 30. After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a gift of a $100 bill contained in an envelope. Many of the journalists accepted the cash - about equivalent to half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper - and one jokingly recalled how Saddam Hussein's regime had also lavished perks on favoured reporters. Giving gifts to journalists is common in many of the Middle East's authoritarian regimes, although reporters at the conference said the practice was not yet widespread in postwar Iraq. The press conference came as Mr Allawi and his allies kicked the electoral campaign of their Iraqi List into high gear. Mr Allawi was not at the conference, but Hussein al-Sadr, a Shia cleric running on the prime minister's list, used it to challenge Islamist opponents in the United Iraqi Alliance, saying they were falsely claiming the backing of the country's Shia clerical establishment. In recent weeks, there have been signs that Mr Allawi's campaign is staging an unexpectedly strong challenge. According to the preliminary results of one survey in Shia majority areas, Mr Allawi's list was favoured by 22 per cent of respondents compared with 27 per cent who chose the Alliance. Mr Allawi's list, whose campaign emphasises the rebuilding of the Iraqi military, is playing on its leader's reputation as a strongman and Iraqi yearnings for stability. Like most candidate groups, Mr Allawi's has not announced its complete list of candidates for security reasons. However, officials in his party say that his prominent Shia allies include Mr Sadr and Basra governor Wael Abd al-Latif, while Sunnis include Falah al-Naquib, the interior minister, and Thamer al-Ghadhban, the minister for petroleum. Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's outgoing president, on Monday ordered an early withdrawal of the country's 1,600 troops from Iraq over the next six months. Mr Kuchma's move came in response to the deaths of eight Ukrainian soldiers in a blast in Iraq at the weekend. Viktor Yushchenko, the president-elect, said he would make the troop withdrawal a priority when he took office in the coming days. Additional reporting by Awadh al-Taee in Baghdad and by Tom Warner in Kiev
Abizaid: Baathists Behind Much of Insurgency, LAT
Los Angeles Times Ex-Baathists Play Crucial Insurgent Role, U.S. Says By John Hendren Times Staff Writer January 11, 2005 TIKRIT, Iraq - U.S. military commanders say a new assessment of the Iraqi insurgency has led them to focus on 34 former Baath Party leaders who they believe are financing and directing attacks against American troops and their allies. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid and other senior Defense officials interviewed in Iraq said much of the insurgent violence was being carried out by a network of regional cells that loosely coordinate their operations with former officials of Saddam Hussein's ruling party. Insurgent leaders often operate out of Syria and Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, officials said. There is a level of tactical coordination and direction that still comes from the remnants of the Baath Party, and I believe a certain amount of this tactical coordination effort is orchestrated from Syria, said Abizaid, the Central Command chief who is directing the war in Iraq. Military officials have conceded that they have limited information on the insurgency due to a lack of reliable intelligence reports. In some cases, unconfirmed tips have come from questionable sources. In others, the information is too dated to allow U.S. forces to track suspected insurgent leaders, officials said. But military leaders said they had been receiving more tips on the insurgency and higher-quality reports in recent weeks. We have focused the intelligence system on these 34 guys in the belief that if there is an emerging leadership structure for the former regime element movement that these 34 guys will be holding the reins, said another senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The new information has allowed military strategists to better discern the face of the insurgency, officials said, and has painted a portrait of guerrillas led by former regime officials who are predominantly Sunni Muslim. U.S. military officials say recent evidence suggested that former members of Hussein's elite fighting units have been involved in attacks on U.S. troops. We see that a lot of the attacks that are going on right now show evidence that they were planned and executed by those who had a military background, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, a deputy to Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. There are some former Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard that are involved in these attacks. U.S. military officials say the insurgency appears to lack a central leader, although they believe that former Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, one of Hussein's top aides, has directed many attacks against the U.S.-led coalition in the Tikrit area. There are former regime element organizational meetings. But there is no sort of grand pooh-bah that sits atop of this thing. There's no Saddam-like figure to whom they have allegiance and who is in overall charge of the insurgency, a senior defense official said. Citing intelligence reports, senior U.S. military officials said Ibrahim and other former Baath Party members met near the Syrian border in November to plan strategy. Also present at that meeting, officials said, were Mahdi Nasr Ubeidi, who supervises financial dealings; Mohammed Younis, who has acted as Ibrahim's assistant from a base east of Baghdad; Ahmed Hassan Kaka, an insurgent leader in the northern city of Kirkuk; Ramadan Zaidan Jaburi, Kaka's assistant; Mohammed Rijab Haddushi Nasser, the leader of the group's operations in Tikrit and nearby Baiji; and Yassir Sabawi Ibrihim Hassan, a courier. The Baathist leaders are believed to be financing the insurgency with billions of dollars that Hussein officials allegedly grabbed from government coffers in the final days before the government fell, officials said. Abizaid and other military strategists believe that leaders of these groups also determine tactics to be used against coalition and Iraqi forces. U.S. efforts to find insurgent leaders have been hampered by Syria, officials said. We have been very clear to the Syrians about our unhappiness about Baathist cells operating from Syria. They have access to money, and they have access to smuggling routes, Abizaid said. The Bush administration has been sternly warning Syria to stop the movement of fighters and smugglers across its borders and crack down on militants using its territory. This month, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage visited the Syrian capital, Damascus, to deliver that message as well as other U.S. demands. Congress has voted to impose sanctions on Syria, but the administration has so far picked the mildest penalty authorized by the law. The president has hinted at a tougher stance, but Armitage told U.S.-run Al Hurra television that Bush had not yet made a decision. He's waiting to see the outcome of Syrian behavior over a length of time and then will make a decision on what to do, Armitage said. Syrian officials based in Washington could not be
Ba'thist Penetration of Iraqi Intelligence
Two recent stories--one in the Wash Times, based on US sources, and the other in the Times of London, based on an interview with Abdel Aziz Hakim, who heads the slate most likely to win the Iraqi elections--underscore a serious problem: the new Iraqi intelligence service is penetrated by what the US military calls Former Regime Elements, whose loyalties lie with the former Ba'thist regime. To a significant extent, the US military and the CIA seem to be operating on the basis of two different views of the nature of the enemy in Iraq and needless to say that just does not work. January 7, 2005 Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES The CIA in Iraq The CIA has been given a leading role in developing the Iraqi intelligence service in Baghdad. U.S. officials say the new spy agency reflects the same institutional weaknesses as the CIA, including poor operational security, bad counterintelligence and an emphasis on process over results. U.S. officials say the biggest problem is that at least 5 percent of the new intelligence agency members were recruited from the former Mukhabarat, Saddam Hussein's repressive security and intelligence service that had about 15,000 members. . . . January 12, 2005 London Times Ayatollah alarms Sunnis with pledge of security force purge By James Hider Election favourite says that he will root out former Saddam acolytes AN IRANIAN-BACKED Ayatollah tipped to become Iraq's first elected leader in decades said yesterday that he would carry out a purge of Iraq's intelligence and security structures if his party wins power. Ayatollah Abdelaziz al-Hakim told The Times that under US occupation and the interim administration the security forces had become infested with former officers of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime and needed to be shaken up. His comments are likely to worry Sunnis, who already fear that their grip on government is slipping. There are major infiltrations, varying in degree from the Mukhabarat (secret intelligence service) to Interior Ministry and to a lesser degree the Ministry of Defence. Some of them are semi-infiltrated, he said. Sometimes we come across their secret reports, where they use similar idioms and expression to those used in Saddam's time, as if Saddam's times were still here. This is sometimes painful, but sometimes it makes you laugh. One of his aides told The Times that intelligence officers were still asking Shia detainees who was behind the 1996 assassination attempt on Saddam's son Uday, while others were asked who they had fought with in the Shia uprising of 1991. The Ayatollah's party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), is the main player on a Shia list endorsed by Iraq's leading cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and including the former Pentagon darling Ahmed Chalabi and partisans of the rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. With Grand Ayatollah al- Sistani's blessing, the United Iraqi Alliance is expected to win at least 27 per cent of the seats in Iraq's new parliament after the January 30 elections. Ayatollah al-Hakim, poised to take power, already has the trappings of leadership in calamitous Baghdad. He was speaking in his heavily guarded headquarters - once the home of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's Deputy Prime Minister - where he survived a suicide car bomb attempt on his life two weeks ago. Aides say that he has not left the compound since the attack. Dozens of armed men loiter in nearby streets, manning roadblocks that cause congestion in the neighbourhood. Asked if he planned a sweeping purge of the intelligence and security forces that the Americans built up piecemeal after the war, the Ayatollah, who once commanded Sciri's 10,000-strong militia, said: For sure. If we want to improve the security situation. It's natural and it's one of our priorities. In their place, he said he would install loyal Iraqis and the believers (in God), and those who believe in the process of change in Iraq. His words caused alarm among Iraq's liberal commentators. If he forms the government, that will be a disaster. He'll purge the army, purge the police and put his own men in it, said Ghassan al-Atiyyah, a secular Shia commentator, who is trying to build bridges with the Sunni community and defuse the uprising. This is the road to civil war. Mr al-Atiyyah brushed aside the Ayatollah's promise to ensure Sunni seats in government even if turnout was too low to bring their parties into parliament. This is exactly what the old regime did, he said. Tawfiq al-Yasseri, the head of the parliamentary defence committee, said that a shake-up in the security apparatus was needed. I agree completely with what Abdul Aziz said about the faults of the security system. They should be changed. All of them they are making dramatic mistakes. He stopped short of endorsing a takeover by Sciri. We need experienced people with clean hands who were persecuted by the former regime. Another
Missing Money: $300 Million Shipped to Lebanon, NYT
New York Times January 22, 2005 MISSING MONEY Mystery in Iraq as $300 Million is Taken Abroad By DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 21 - Earlier this month, according to Iraqi officials, $300 million in American bills was taken out of Iraq's Central Bank, put into boxes and quietly put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon. The money was to be used to buy tanks and other weapons from international arms dealers, the officials say, as part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the fledgling Iraqi Army. But exactly where the money went, and to whom, and for precisely what, remains a mystery, at least to Iraqis who say they have been trying to find out. The $300 million deal appears to have been arranged outside the American-designed financial controls intended to help Iraq - which defaulted on its external debt in the 1990's - legally import goods. By most accounts here, there was no public bidding for the arms contracts, nor was the deal approved by the entire 33-member Iraqi cabinet. On Friday, the mysterious flight became an issue in this country's American-backed election campaign, when Defense Minister Hazim al-Shalaan, faced with corruption allegations, threatened to arrest a political rival. In an interview on Al Jazeera television, Mr. Shalaan said he would order the arrest of Ahmed Chalabi, one of the country's most prominent politicians, who has publicly accused Mr. Shalaan of sending the cash out of the country. Mr. Shalaan said he would extradite Mr. Chalabi to face corruption charges of his own. We will arrest him and hand him over to Interpol, Mr. Shalaan thundered on Al Jazeera. The charge against Mr. Chalabi, he said, would be maligning him and his ministry. He suggested that Mr. Chalabi had made the charges to further his political ambitions. Mr. Chalabi first made the allegation against Mr. Shalaan last week, on another Arabic-language television network. He said there was no legitimate reason why the Iraqi government should have used cash to pay for goods from abroad. He implied that at least some of the money was being used for other things. Why was $300 million in cash put on an airplane? Mr. Chalabi asked in an interview this week. Where did the money go? What was it used for? Who was it given to? We don't know. The $300 million flight has been the talk of Iraq's political class, and fueled the impression among many Iraqis and Western officials that the interim Iraqi government, set up after the American occupation formally ended in June, is awash in corruption. It is not clear whether the money came from Iraqi or American sources, or both. I am sorry to say that the corruption here is worse now than in the Saddam Hussein era, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser, who said he had not been informed of the details of the flight or the arms deal. That charge is echoed outside of Iraq as well. Isam al-Khafaji, the director of the New York-based Iraq Revenue Watch, said corruption had become an open secret within the Iraqi government. There is no legal system to bring charges against anyone not following the rules and not abiding by the law, especially if you're a powerful politician, Mr. Khafaji said. That's the tragedy of Iraq: Everyone runs their business like a private fiefdom. Mr. Shalaan did not respond to several requests for an interview, but one of his aides insisted that the arms deal was legal and that the money had been well spent. Reached by telephone in Lebanon, the aide, Mishal Sarraf, said the arms deal had been approved by four senior members of the Iraqi government, including Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and Mr. Shalaan. He said it had been carried out quickly because of the urgency of the guerrilla war. He said he had not realized that the deal had been done in cash. We don't want to hide anything, Mr. Sarraf said. He said the armaments themselves had been manufactured in Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States. He said the money had bought armored personal carriers, tanks and even Humvees. Mr. Sarraf refused to say who received the money, saying it was too dangerous. They could be killed, he said. The public fight with Mr. Shalaan is the latest political twist for Mr. Chalabi, once the darling of the Bush administration and one of the main proponents of the invasion of Iraq. He has since become a pariah in the United States, accused of exaggerating Mr. Hussein's prohibited weapons activities. After a bitter falling out with the Bush administration, which accused him of passing secrets to the Iranian government, Mr. Chalabi has begun to mend fences with the Americans, and is positioning himself to make a run for the prime minister's seat. In threatening to arrest Mr. Chalabi, Mr. Shalaan appears to be trying to change the subject to Mr. Chalabi's own legal problems. In Jordan, Mr. Chalabi faces charges that he embezzled millions of dollars from the Petra Bank, which collapsed in the
Allawi Runs with Senior Baathists, NY Sun
New York Sun January 28, 2005 Allawi Runs With Alleged Baathists BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun WASHINGTON - As Iraqis prepare to head to the polls Sunday some of the candidates on the ballot may be disqualified from holding office due to their prior connections to Saddam Hussein's government. On January 11, the deputy of Iraq's Debaathification Commission, Jawad al-Maliki, submitted the names of 15 people running on Prime Minister Allawi's 221-person slate that he said cannot run for office because they were barred under the lustration procedures of the transitional administrative law. Mr.al-Maliki is a member of the Dawa Party, which has fielded candidates as part of the United Iraqi Alliance, a slate comprised largely of religious and secular Shiite leaders that is expected to win the most seats this Sunday. The campaign leading up to the national assembly election has been marred by terrorist violence. Yesterday, Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released a video showing the beheading of Mr. Allawi's secretary, Salem Jaafar al-Kanani. We did not get these names until very late, a senior official with the Debaathification Commission told The New York Sun. But Allawi's list has many senior Baathists. We checked the names. The official, who asked that his identity not be disclosed due to recent threats, said the commission has received no response so far from the higher independent commission for elections in Iraq other than a signed form from the suspected candidates pledging they were not senior members of the Baath party, Saddam Hussein's regime, or engaging in espionage activities on behalf of Iraq's old intelligence services. All candidates in Sunday's election must sign such a form. The candidates mentioned in the letter from Mr. al-Maliki include Nizar al Hazairan, the 10th name on Mr. Allawi's al-Iraqiyya list. According to the commission, Mr. al-Hazairan was a top-ranking Baath party member and a member of Iraq's Parliament under Saddam's rule. He was also a top sheik of the Azza tribe in the Diyala province, an area rife with insurgent violence. The seventh person on the Allawi list, Rasim al-Awwadi, was also mentioned in the letter as having been an informer for the Iraqi intelligence service while he was in exile in Jordan. Ministers close to Mr. Allawi have been accused in recent weeks of covering up their Baathist ties. For example, the commission has looked at the case of Adnan al-Jenabi, a minister without portfolio in the interim government who is the fifth name on Mr. Allawi's list and manager of the slate's political campaign. According to officials familiar with the investigation, Mr. al-Jenabi was chairman of the oil and energy committee of Saddam's Parliament in the late 1990s, the height of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, has accused Iraq's defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, of being a Baathist agent as recently as 2003. For publicizing these charges, Mr. Shaalan threatened to arrest Mr. Chalabi and send him to Jordan to face charges leveled by a military court for his role in the collapse of the Petra Bank. Mr. Chalabi is the nominal head of the Debaathification Commission. Mr. al-Jenabi's cousin, Saad al-Jenabi, was also mentioned by the commission as having been an informer for the Iraqi intelligence services while living in exile in America as recently as 1998. Saad al-Jenabi tops his own slate of candidates for the national assembly. The Debaathification Commission researches former regime officials based on old government files uncovered in the first weeks and months of the war by Iraqi militias including Mr. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and Peshmerga militias loyal to the two major Kurdish parties. Last year the Iraq Memory Foundation, the organization run by human rights activist Kanan Makiya, agreed to share documents it has found and is now analyzing. The commission does not, however, have access to the trove of documents found by the American military in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which are to this day in the custody of the American embassy in Baghdad. The Debaathification Commission was created to formalize a process of appeals to the coalition provisional authority's original debaathification order. That order said that any member of the old Baath party senior enough to have had to inform on his neighbor would be barred from the new government. The panel has come under criticism by some who have said it would be easy to forge incriminating proof against the political opponents of those doing the vetting. Last spring, a former CIA analyst and noted author, Kenneth Pollack, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he suspected Mr. Chalabi was forging documents and recommended the American military demand that the Iraqi leader hand over those documents he had stored away. A former deputy defense minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, told the Sun yesterday his experience in the
Israeli Tells Story of Vote in Iraq Elections, Ha'aretz
Ha'aretz January 30, 2005 An Israeli rediscovers his Iraqi roots By Shahar Smooha AMMAN - There was nothing surprising about the stunned looks I got last Friday as I stood at the entrance to the girls school in Swafiyeh, handed the guards and the representative of the Iraqi elections committee an Israeli passport and declared my wish to register to vote in the elections to the Iraqi parliament, which would begin in Jordan exactly a week later. The elections official asked to see some document attesting to my connection to Iraq and the belittling look on his face was replaced by one of sincere astonishment when I gave him my grandparents' 1951 laissez-passez. After pointing out my father's name on the yellowing certificate and presenting a signed and notarized translation of a document proving I am his son, the mustachioed Iraqi ordered me to wait. He disappeared into the big building with my passport and the Smooha family's most precious document, leaving me with the guards at the entrance. A scant five minutes later it was my turn to be surprised. The mustachioed one, smiling broadly, appeared at the edge of the school's inner courtyard, instructed the guards in Arabic to let me in, and then turned to me in English: Welcome. Please follow me. When I strode with him into one of the classrooms manned by Iraqi elections officials, another surprise awaited me. The four women and young man seated behind small desks had been apprised of the Israeli's approach and they were waiting for me, all smiling. With a warmheartedness I had never encountered anywhere I had gone to tend to my bureaucratic matters, they told me to sit down, perused my grandparents' transit papers, stamped Exiting without possibility of return, and were surprised that the only thing I know how to say in Iraqi Arabic is How are you? Three minutes later I was back on my feet, an Iraqi voter card in my shirt pocket alongside my Israeli passport. See you next week, think hard about who to vote for, one of the women said as I left the room. On Friday, after a week of digesting my new Iraqi identity - thanks to the Iraqi elections committee's decision to allow every Iraqi-born adult or their children over age 18 to vote, regardless of sex, religion or nationality - I returned to the Amman girls school. This time I only needed to bring my voter card and some form of ID, and once again the process was fast, efficient and cordial. One of the women I dealt with a week earlier examined the documents, told me quietly that she had wondered whether I would indeed come vote and then directed me with a smile to another table. There a mustachioed and grave-looking man was seated who made me dip my finger in a sponge swimming in a puddle of indelible ink. In my naivete, I presumed this was the first stage of voting by fingerprint, but the Iraqis corrected my mistake with a smile usually reserved for the feeble-minded: coloring the finger with the black muck that will come off in another month, maybe more, was merely intended to prevent repeat voting. Once the Swafiyeh ink-blotter was pleased with the blackening of my finger, he presented me with a voting form the size of a poster and sent me behind a low divider. I had decided two days earlier who I would vote for, but then, alone behind the divider, I was genuinely distressed for the first time: The enormous form contained 111 names of the lists competing in the elections, all written in Arabic whereas I, unfortunately, can read only Hebrew and English. I signaled to a member of the polling station committee and asked him for translation help. He asked that I whisper in his ear the name of the party for which I want to cast my ballot and after I did so, he wrote its name in Arabic on my card. Afterward, aware that attempting to locate the party's name on the long list would try the patience of the voters waiting in line, he pointed to the title on the voting form. I compared his handwritten note to the inscription on the poster, checked the box next to the party's name and dropped the folded poster into the transparent ballot box. When I left the room, fairly excited, some of the Iraqi officials greeted me and the ink-blotter smiled for the first time. In the taxi ride back to the border crossing near Beit She'an, after a meal of mixed-grill and hummus at an Iraqi restaurant in Amman, everything seemed like a particularly hallucinatory dream. Only my black finger reminds me what a celebration of democracy I took part in a few hours ago.
CPA Didn't Monitor Billions of Dollars, NYT
New York Times January 31, 2005 Occupation Authority Did Not Properly Monitor Spending of Iraqi Money, U.S. Audit Says By ERIK ECKHOLM The American occupation authority that governed Iraq until mid-2004 did not properly monitor the spending of $8.8 billion in Iraqi money, opening the door to possible corruption, the federal watchdog agency for Iraqi reconstruction said in a report released yesterday. As it disbursed money to Iraqi ministries to pay salaries and finance development projects, the occupation authority, known as the Coalition Provisional Authority, failed to establish financial controls and transparency, said the report by the watchdog agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction. As a result, the report said, there was no assurance that the funds were used for the purposes mandated. In a written response included in the report, the former chief of the occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, strongly disputed its conclusions. He said the inspectors had seemed to assume that Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war. The report does not cite direct evidence of corruption with the Iraqi ministries but notes, among other examples, that one ministry received money to pay 8,206 guards while the presence of only 602 guards in that ministry could be verified. Allotments of hundreds of millions of dollars were repeatedly given to ministries that had not presented detailed budget plans to explain how the money would be used, the report said. The new report covers money given to Iraqi ministries between the American invasion of early 2003 and the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in mid-2004. During that time, according to a United Nations resolution, the occupation authority was responsible for disbursing Iraqi oil money, leftover receipts from Iraq's oil-for-food relief program, and seized assets, which were combined into the Development Fund for Iraq. A large share of the money was transferred to Iraqi ministries, while several billions more were spent directly by the Americans for fuel imports and construction projects. An international auditing agency has questioned the occupation authority's management of the Iraqi money it spent directly, charging a lack of oversight and overuse of non-competitive contracts. Formal responsibility over Iraqi finances, which are continually replenished by the country's large oil exports, shifted last year to the interim Iraqi government. Other American and international auditors have warned that weak financial controls are a continuing problem in Iraqi ministries, opening the door to possible fraud, kickbacks and misuse of funds. In his comments on the new report, Mr. Bremer said the authors had failed to understand the political context at the time and the initial disarray within the Iraqi government. Of the questioned payments for ministry guard units, for example, he said, It would have been dangerous for security - ours and Iraq's - to stop paying armed young men.
Widespread Corruption in Allawi Government
NB: Zaab Sethna was in Iraq, working on the election campaign with the United Iraqi Alliance. Dear All, I am sorry to say that corruption in Iraq is worse than ever. As I was leaving Baghdad airport this morning the Iraqi officials refused to let me leave unless I paid a bribe. I refused and they kept me waiting over half an hour until I made a big enough fuss and they let me check in. Then at the second passport check they again asked me for payment and threatened to off-load me from the flight. I have never encountered this kind of blatant extortion anywhere in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. Regards, Zaab Sethna - Agence France Presse February 2, 2005 Iraqi PM contender brands Allawi government most corrupt ever Baghdad: A top Shiite candidate to become Iraq's next prime minister on Wednesday branded the interim government of premier Iyad Allawi the most corrupt in Iraq's history. Hussein Shahristani, a former nuclear chemist who was jailed during Saddam Hussein's regime, also said Sunnis should be granted the presidency in a gesture to the disgruntled minority. But Shahristani lashed out at the Allawi government and singled out defense minister Hazem Shaalan as the main offender. It is very well known in the country that the corruption is very widespread from the police to the judicial systems... As a matter of fact Iraq has never known the level of corruption prevailing now, Shahristani told AFP. A lot of public funds have gone missing under the Coalition Provisional Authority... and even now, he said, of the disbanded US occupation authority. Shahristani took Shaalan to task for the defense ministry's transfer of 300 million dollars to Lebanon as part of an arms deal last month. The fact that the minister of defense, on the day there were four suicide bombings in the capital, spends all his day at the airport trying to take a few hundred million dollars of cash out of the country before the elections doesn't speak very well for the government's performance. The charges have already been raised by another leading member of the front-running Shiite coalition list, Ahmed Chalabi. The defense minister threatened to arrest Chalabi last month over the comments. Shahristani, who spent 10 years in the dreaded Abu Ghraib prison for refusing to work on Saddam's weapons programme, vowed the next government would review all suspect contracts made under the Allawi cabinet. One thing we are going to pursue is that all suspicious contracts should be properly examined and any funds that have been misused should be returned to the public... and these things should be explained to the Iraqi people.
Elections Change Mood in Iraq, NYT
New York Times February 6, 2005 POST-ELECTION CHATTER Suddenly, It's 'America Who?' By DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq - Through 22 months of occupation and war here, the word America was usually the first word to pass through the lips of an Iraqi with a gripe. Why can't the Americans produce enough electricity? Why can't the Americans guarantee security? Why can't the Americans find my stolen car? Last week, as the euphoria of nationwide elections washed over this country, a remarkable thing happened: Iraqis, by and large, stopped talking about the Americans. With the ballots still being counted here, the Iraqi candidates retired to the back rooms to cut political deals, leaving the Americans, for the first time, standing outside. In Baghdad's tea shops and on its street corners, the talk turned to which of those candidates might form the new government, to their schemes and stratagems, and to Iraqi problems and Iraqi solutions. And for the United States, the assessments turned unfamiliarly measured. We have no electricity here, no water and there's no gasoline in the pumps, said Salim Mohammed Ali, a tire repairman who voted in last Sunday's election. Who do I blame? The Iraqi government, of course. They can't do anything. Asked about the American military presence here, Mr. Ali chose his words carefully. I think the Americans should stay here until our security forces are able to do the jobs themselves, Mr. Ali said, echoing virtually every senior American officer in Iraq. We Iraqis have our own government now, and we can invite the Americans to stay. The Iraqi focus on its own democracy, and the new view of the United States, surfaced in dozens of interviews with Iraqis since last Sunday's election. It is unclear, of course, how widespread the trend is; whole communities, like the Sunni Arabs, remain almost implacably opposed to the presence of American forces. But by many accounts, the elections last week altered Iraqis' relationship with the United States more than any single event since the invasion. Since April 9, 2003, when Saddam Hussein's rule crumbled, Iraqis have viewed themselves more or less as American subjects. American officials ran their government, American soldiers fought their war, American money paid to rebuild Iraq. Indeed, the American project to implant democracy in Iraq often seemed to be in danger of falling victim to the country's manifest political passivity, born of a quarter-century of torture centers, mass graves, free food and pennies-a-gallon gasoline. The more the Americans tried to nudge the Iraqis towards self-government, the more the Iraqis expected the Americans to do. As the insurgents wreaked more and more havoc, and sabotaged more and more of the country's power supply, the Iraqis, not surprisingly, blamed the people in charge. Day by day, many Iraqis' gratitude for the toppling of Saddam Hussein seemed to harden into bitterness and contempt. After June 28, when American suzerainty here formally ended, not many Iraqis bought the notion that the interim government of Ayad Allawi was anything other than a caretaker regime, hand-picked by the Americans and the United Nations. All that seemed to change last Sunday, when millions of Iraqis streamed to the polls. Few if any Iraqis had ever voted in anything approaching a free election, yet most seemed to know exactly what the exercise was about: selecting their own representatives to lead their own country. Our dilemma is solved, said Rashid Majid, 80, who wore his best jacket to the polls. We will follow our new leaders, because we have chosen them. Some Iraqis saw in the election their own liberation, one that many did not feel on April 9, 2003. Mr. Hussein's regime was not toppled by Iraqis but by the American military, a fact that has lingered in Iraqi minds. Yet after casting ballots in a free election, conducted by more than 100,000 Iraqi poll workers, many Iraqis said they finally felt free - not only from the terrors of the old regime, but also from acute feelings of humiliation about the American occupation. The election was a victory of our own making, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser. The Iraqi people voted with their own blood. The newfound self-respect that Mr. Rubaie believes the election conferred on ordinary Iraqis seems to have had an immediate impact on their view of the United States. Suddenly empowered with the vote, Iraqis no longer seem to view America as all-powerful, or themselves as unable to affect events. A result has been a suddenly more accepting view of the United States. The realism among Iraqis was evident on election day itself. Amid the euphoria of voting, America, which had almost always been the first topic of conversation, was suddenly evanescent, unmentioned in a score of interviews unless a reporter raised it first. And when Iraqis did talk of America, it was with a reasonableness and patience that had seemed missing, a willingness to balance
WSJ: Syria's Role in the Insurgency
NB: And one might also ask just what is the quality of Syrian intelligence regarding al Qaida, which as the WSJ explains, is one of the reasons for the kid-gloves approach to Damascus. Wall Street Journal February 7, 2005 REVIEW OUTLOOK Warning to Damascus Among the notable parts of President Bush's State of the Union speech last week was its blunt warning to Syria, next door enemy of free Iraq. Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region, Mr. Bush said. We expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom. Let's hope the President finally means it, because this is only the latest U.S. warning to Damascus since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Colin Powell visited Bashar Assad soon thereafter -- despite Pentagon objections that the Syrian dictator would consider it a sign of U.S. weakness. And sure enough, Syria has been adding to our troubles in Iraq ever since. In November, U.S. troops in Fallujah found GPS systems with waypoints originating in western Syria, according to the Washington Post. Captured Iraqi and foreign fedayeen report being trained in small arms and explosives at camps in Syria. The Treasury Department has also implicated Syrian individuals and financial institutions in financing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist network and in terrorist-related money-laundering schemes. More worrisome, General George Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has said he has information that Iraq's Baathists have established the New Regional Command, operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq. The leader of this command, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, formerly Saddam's No. 2, reportedly moves freely between Syria and Iraq to direct the insurgency. The U.S. also knows that in recent months the Baathist Regional Command has invited Sunni tribal leaders to meetings in Damascus hotels in order to recruit them to the insurgency. Yet so far the U.S. hasn't mounted a single Predator strike on any of these or other insurgent targets inside Syria. In part, this is because the State Department wants to engage Syria in a peace process with Israel, and in part because the CIA seems to be heavily reliant on information obtained through Syrian intelligence about al Qaeda. As a result, both State and CIA tend to treat Syria's behavior either as a function of its relations with Israel, or as a matter of not doing enough. But the real problem is that Syria uses its minimal cooperation to disguise its larger efforts to undermine U.S. interests and allies throughout the region. It is true, for example, that Syria has provided the U.S. with actionable intelligence that helped prevent a terrorist attack on a U.S. military facility. Yet as former CIA Director James Woolsey noted in these pages last year, too-heavy reliance on intelligence provided by liaison [i.e., foreign] services can sap our will to challenge a foreign government that is trying to buy our quiescence with dollops of intelligence. As for the positive role Syria might play in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, those interests are far less important than the imperative of preventing Syria from abetting the insurgency in Iraq. With a new government soon to be formed in Baghdad, now is the time to make clear to the young Assad that he will pay a price if he continues aiding the enemies of free Iraq.
Rivkin Sanford, No Crime in Plame Kerfuffle, WSJ
Wall Street Journal AT LAW Outing Operatives, Jailing Journalists There's no crime at the center of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. BY DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND BRUCE W. SANFORD Saturday, December 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. How did a federal law passed in 1982 to stop the activities of renegade ex-CIA agent Philip Agee become the tool to bring reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper to the brink of jail for refusing to talk to a grand jury? Even more fundamentally, how has this law, whose inglorious history consists of a grand total of one prosecution of a junior CIA clerk in Ghana, thus far managed to escape serious scrutiny when its demanding requirements plainly were never intended to apply to the sort of case special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is pursuing against the Bush administration? Last week, the New York Times and Time magazine reporters, both of whom have been held in contempt, took their arguments to the federal appeals court in Washington. They argued that the First Amendment and the federal law of privileges entitle them to protect their confidential sources from the reach of Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation into the identification of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak. Ironically, what started with a strong media endorsement as a probe of alleged executive branch misconduct is now so thoroughly focused on the journalists that we have lost sight of the fundamental flaw in the entire enterprise. In all of this, far too little attention has been paid to the law that is driving Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry. Nearly all discussion of the Plame investigation has instead mechanically assumed, without any critical thinking, that a crime was committed when two senior administration officials, in Mr. Novak's words, disclosed to him in July 2003 that Ms. Plame was a CIA operative. In fact, the most powerful reason why journalists should not be jailed for failing to cooperate with Mr. Fitzgerald's grand jury is because Mr. Fitzgerald has no crime to investigate. The Plame inquiry is justified, we're told, by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which Congress passed because our intelligence community was apoplectic over Mr. Agee's outing during the 1970s of CIA covert agents stationed abroad to purposefully disrupt the agency's operations. The bill probably should have been called the Get Philip Agee Act. The law requires a prosecutor to show that a person has disclosed information that identifies a covert agent (not an operative) while actually knowing that the agent has been undercover within the last five years in a foreign country and that the disclosed information would expose the agent. For a person who had no classified access to the outed agent's identity, the law provides the additional hurdle of proving a pattern of exposing agents with the belief that such actions would harm the government's spying capabilities. As a practical matter, this high degree of proof of willfulness or intentionality would be almost impossible to find in any circumstances other than in a Philip Agee clone (and maybe not even him). To interpret the statute more broadly would flout the longstanding American jurisprudential tradition of narrowly construing criminal laws, especially those that encroach upon free-speech values. The legislative history of the law could not make its narrow purpose more clear. The principal thrust of this [statute] has been to make criminal those disclosures which represent a conscious and pernicious effort to identify and expose agents with the intent to impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States by such actions, reads the Senate report. Legislators emphasized that they crafted the bill to exclude the possibility that casual discussion, political debate, [or] the journalistic pursuit of a story on intelligence . . . will be chilled. The statute was thus not intended to target executive branch officials who make disclosures--whether carelessly, out of personal or bureaucratic animus, or in pursuit of an important foreign-policy objective--while talking about national security matters with reporters. Indeed, even if Congress wanted to criminalize--which it in fact emphatically did not--executive branch release for policy reasons of a particular type of intelligence information, such a regulatory scheme would have serious separation-of-powers problems. The act was also not supposed to entangle reporters in a net of prison sentences, either as recipients of leaks or as disclosers in their own right. Yet here we are with a special prosecutor on the loose and in pursuit of jail terms for journalists regarding a dissemination of information which was relevant to the central foreign-policy question of our times--i.e., did the U.S. embark on its invasion of Iraq with a reasonable if mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction? For over 30 years, courts have recognized that reporters should not have to testify
US Media File Brief: No Crime in Plame Leak, WaPo
Washington Post Media Groups Back Reporters In Court Filing Judges Urged to Determine if Crime Occurred in Leak Case By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer March 24, 2005 A federal court should first determine whether a crime has been committed in the disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's name before prosecutors are allowed to continue seeking testimony from journalists about their confidential sources, the nation's largest news organizations and journalism groups asserted in a court filing yesterday. The 40-page brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, argues that there is ample evidence . . . to doubt that a crime has been committed in the case, which centers on the question of whether Bush administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in the summer of 2003. Plame's name was published first by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak and later by other publications. The friend-of-the-court brief was filed by 36 news organizations, including The Washington Post and major broadcast and cable television news networks, in support of reporters at the New York Times and Time magazine who face possible jail time for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the allegations. Those two organizations filed a petition Tuesday asking the full appeals court to review the case. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled in February that two reporters -- Judith Miller of the Times and Matthew Cooper of Time -- should be jailed for contempt if they continued to refuse to name their sources to the grand jury. Attorneys for the news organizations said yesterday that their decision to submit the brief underscores deep concern in the journalism community over special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's tactics. Fitzgerald, who heads the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, is in the midst of two separate battles with journalists over testimony related to confidential sources. The petition by the Times and Time magazine focuses on whether reporters have a First Amendment right to resist disclosure of confidential sources. The brief by the other news organizations takes a different approach: It argues that the statute at issue in the case, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, was aimed at egregious attempts to expose U.S. spies and was crafted to avoid ensnaring reporters going about their business. It asks for a hearing to determine whether a crime has even been committed. Bruce W. Sanford, a lawyer who handled the case for the group of news organizations, said yesterday that it's a very poor result if somehow reporters got entangled in a net of prison sentences in an investigation which ends up with no indictment because no crime has been committed. Attorneys for the Times and Time magazine have said that they will appeal to the Supreme Court if necessary.
Jim Hoagland, Playing Both Sides in Jordan
Washington Post Playing Both Sides in Jordan By Jim Hoagland March 27, 2005 Pop quiz: Which Arab ruler is to George W. Bush as Yasser Arafat was to Bill Clinton? Congratulations if you said King Abdullah of Jordan. And a tip of the hat to all those Iraqis who came up with the answer so fast. You know your neighborhood, and your neighbor. Abdullah emulates Arafat in possessing special, drop-in-anytime visiting rights to the White House and in merchandising that access to puff up his influence at home and with other Arab leaders. The Jordanian monarch seizes every opportunity to see and be seen with the U.S. president and his senior aides. Rather than attend an Arab summit to support his unconvincing, warmed-over version of a peace plan with Israel, Abdullah was again stateside last week, basking in the glow of meetings with Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. And, as Arafat did, Abdullah works against U.S. interests in Iraq and elsewhere while pretending otherwise. The youthful Jordanian autocrat pulls the wool over the eyes of a Republican president as the deceased Palestinian revolutionary did with Bush's Democratic predecessor. If there is a difference in the comparative equation, it is likely that Clinton distrusted Arafat more. In Abdullah's case, Bush again displays a disturbing tendency to overinvest in the swagger and guile of people who run or who are close to spy agencies. (See Tenet, George, and Putin, Vladimir, for details.) I stipulate the obvious: Bush is obliged by realpolitik to work with Abdullah and with Jordan. One of only two Arab states that have peace treaties with Israel, Jordan has long been an important link in the Middle East peace process as well as a platform for U.S. covert and military activities. But a few senior U.S. officials, less impressed with Abdullah's Special Operations background and his deep connections to the CIA, fear that the president's lavish embrace is overdone. They point to the nasty public row between Iraq and Jordan over a suicide bombing and to the apparently protected presence in Jordan of key operatives in the Iraqi insurgency. These are troubling signs being ignored by Bush. Iraqis have not forgotten that Jordan supported Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and afterward. Iraqi resources were drained by the massive breaking of sanctions and other corrupt dealings that enriched the Jordanian establishment at the expense of the Iraqi people. Abdullah's meddling in Iraqi affairs since the overthrow of the Baathists has rekindled those resentments. The king has exacerbated tensions with his aggressive championing of his co-religionists, Iraq's Sunni minority, who provided the base of past Baathist power and of the present insurgency. Abdullah publicly warned against the coming to power of Iraq's Shiite majority as he sought to get Bush to postpone the Jan. 30 elections. He has portrayed Iraq on the edge of a religious war. He has channeled support to CIA favorites among Iraqi factions. So when Iraqis heard on March 14 that the Jordanian family of Raed Banna had thrown a huge party to celebrate their relative's martyrdom -- which consisted of killing himself and 125 Iraqis in the Shiite town of Hilla -- they said enough. Angry crowds sacked the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad and forced it to close. Iraqis are feeling very bitter over what happened, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said. Shiite leader Abdul Aziz Hakim called on Jordan to acknowledge the meanness and lowliness of people who celebrate the killing of honorable Iraqis and to stop the incitement, recruitment and mobilization of Jordanian terrorists to Iraq. Hakim should not hold his breath. Former Baathist lieutenants who are now key operatives in the Iraqi insurgency still move themselves and money around Jordan without interference. In an incident that Bush should probe, U.S. officials a few months ago identified two such Iraqis and asked that they be questioned. But the king waved the Americans off, saying that the two were minor figures who did not have blood on their hands. We came to know that wasn't true, as he no doubt knew back then, one U.S. official told me. Abdullah has publicly suggested that Syria should consider Bush's demand for a withdrawal from Lebanon while privately sharing with other Arab leaders his fears that such a move would be destabilizing. And he has been more supportive of the president's push for democracy in the Arab world in Washington meetings than he has been at home. This does not win Abdullah the world-class laurels for duplicity and deception garnered by Arafat. But then the king is still young. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WSJ: No Crime in Plame Leak
Wall Street Journal REVIEW OUTLOOK No Crime, No Foul March 28, 2005 The latest turn in the Valerie Plame leak investigation is that the very same press corps that cheered on the appointment of a special prosecutor to harass the Bush Administration and conservative columnist Robert Novak now doubts whether any crime was ever committed. That's the notable argument in a friend of the court brief filed last week by 36 leading news organizations (including this one) with the intent of keeping New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper out of jail: There exists ample evidence on public record to cast serious doubt as to whether a crime has even been committed under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. ... If in fact no crime under the Act has been committed, then any need to compel Miller and Cooper to reveal their confidential sources should evaporate. (The two are currently free pending appeal of a contempt citation.) Some of us have argued from the start that a showing of criminality under the statute would require that Ms. Plame have been a covert agent whose identity the CIA was taking active steps to conceal; and that the leaker revealed her identity maliciously and with the intent of damaging U.S. national security. Whoever revealed Ms. Plame's identity to Mr. Novak almost certainly doesn't fit that profile, and it's a shame that the largely anti-Bush press corps couldn't see it that way until now -- when the 2004 election is over and its own interests are at stake. URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB96788213490504,00.html
Insurgent Penetration of Iraqi Gov't, Wash Times
The Washington Times Inside the Ring By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough March 25, 2005 [Excerpt] Spy penetrations Pentagon officials tell us one of the major problems for the new Iraqi government and its security and military services is a lack of good counterintelligence. Iraqi insurgents have succeeded in planting covert agents inside a number of key agencies, we are told. The penetrations include compromises uncovered so far in the Iraqi prime minister's office, senior levels of the ministry of defense and the security forces in charge of Baghdad International Airport. In one case, a private Iraqi company that bid on a security contract for the airport was found out to have been a front for Iraqis connected to the insurgency, the officials said. The officials said counterintelligence efforts to find and neutralize the insurgents in Iraq have been very difficult and have not been given a high priority by either Iraqi or U.S. and coalition officials. http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050324-114419-7900r.htm
Dr. Germs: The Dog Ate Them, AP, Iraq News Note
NB: This strange account of what happened to Iraq's anthrax, provided by Dr. Rihab Taha, a major figure in Iraq's BW program, is uncorroborated and contradicts other available information, according to a very knowledgeable source. So why would anyone believe it? Iraqi Anthrax Scientist Kept Her Secret March 28, 2005 Associated Press By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent In early 2003, as war fever built in Washington, an Iraqi scientist faced a fateful choice. Rihab Rashid Taha could try to lower the heat by finally telling U.N.inspectors what happened to Iraq's missing anthrax. Or she could remain silent, rather than risk Saddam Hussein's wrath. The microbiologist's dilemma, she has told U.S. interrogators, was that her team 12 years earlier had destroyed the lethal bacteria by dumping it practically at the gates of one of Saddam's main palaces, and the feared Iraqi despot might grow enraged at news of anthrax on his doorstep. Taha chose silence in 2003, thus stoking suspicions of those who contended Iraq still harbored biological weapons. Soon thereafter, two years ago this month, the United States invaded. Whether those involved understood the significance and disastrous consequences of their actions is unclear, the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group says of Taha and colleagues in its final report on Iraq weapons-hunting. These efforts demonstrate the problems that existed on both sides in establishing the truth. It also demonstrates anew that the war was launched on the basis not of hard fact, but of speculation and untruths, especially about Iraqi motives and actions. We ourselves had a lesson to learn there, one ex-arms inspector, Australian microbiologist Rod Barton, says of the account by Taha, still in U.S. detention in Iraq. The anthrax mystery had bedeviled U.N. inspectors since the 1990s. The Iraqis claimed then that before the 1991 Gulf War they had made 2,191 gallons of anthrax, considered highly suited for biowarfare because its spores are relatively easily produced, durable and deadly when inhaled. They said they destroyed all of it in mid-1991 at their bioweapons center at Hakam, 50 miles southwest of Baghdad. The U.N. experts, who scoured Iraq for banned arms from 1991-98 and again in 2002-03, confirmed anthrax had been dumped at Hakam. But they also found evidence indicating Iraq produced an additional, undeclared 1,800 gallons of anthrax. In early 2003, chief inspector Hans Blix put the seeming discrepancy high on his list of Iraq's unresolved disarmament issues, complaining the Iraqis must be withholding information. Colin Powell dwelled on an anthrax threat in his February 2003 speech seeking U.N. Security Council authority for war. Warning of tens of thousands of teaspoons of anthrax still in Iraq, the then-U.S. secretary of state said of the discrepancy, This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. But the truth appears to lie elsewhere, according to the account disclosed in a little-noted section of the Iraq Survey Group report, a 350,000-word document issued last Oct. 6. The British-educated Taha, who ran the Hakam complex in the 1980s, told interrogators her staff carted off anthrax from Hakam in April 1991 and stored it in a bungalow near the presidential palace at Radwaniyah, 20 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. teams report. Later that year the crew dumped the chemically deactivated anthrax on grounds surrounded by a Special Republican Guard barracks near the palace, the report says. Barton, who took part in Iraq Survey Group interrogations, said in a recent Australian Broadcasting Corp. interview that the disposal was carried out in July 1991 when Iraqi orders came down to destroy all bioweapons agents immediately. Then, through the years, Taha and other Iraqi officials denied the missing anthrax ever existed. The members of the program were too scared to tell the Regime that they had dumped deactivated anthrax within sight of one of the principal presidential palaces, the Iraq Survey Group says. The arms hunters' report also concludes, ISG's investigation found no evidence that Iraq continued to hide BW (biological) weapons after the unilateral destruction of 1991 was complete. We knew there was a lie, Barton said, but we jumped to the wrong conclusions. The U.N. inspection agency says in an assessment of the U.S. report that the Taha disclosure is perhaps the most significant new information in the biological area. It suggested sampling and analysis at the Radwaniyah site to corroborate her account.
INC: INC Vindicated by WMD Report
INC VINDICATED BY WMD REPORT Iraqi National Congress Press Statement BAGHDAD (31 March, 2005): The Iraqi National Congress had a negligible impact on US intelligence assessments of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction according to the Robb-Silverman Report issued today. Dr. Ahmad Chalabi of the INC said, We welcome this report as a vindication of the INC. We have consistently stated that the INC played a very small role in US intelligence reporting on Saddam's WMDs and the report proves that. Page 108 of the Robb-Silverman Report states: In fact, over all, CIA's post-war investigations revealed that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on pre-war assessments. Dr Chalabi stated, The Report also vindicates our position that we only provided two defectors to the US intelligence community. We dispute the allegation that the INC 'directed' a defector to lie as the CIA charges. Page 108: Reporting from these two INC sources had a negligible impact on the overall assessments, however. Dr Chalabi said, We have consistently denied that we were associated with the defector known as Curveball and the report conclusively proves that. Major media organizations like Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times owe us an apology for printing lies about us. Page 108: Despite speculation that Curveball was encouraged to lie by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the CIA's post-war investigations were unable to uncover any evidence that the INC or any other organization was directing Curveball to feed misleading information to the Intelligence Community. Instead, the post-war investigations concluded that Curveball's reporting was not influenced by, controlled by, or connected to, the INC. Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Max Boot, Outsourcing Snafu, LAT
Los Angeles Times The Iraq War's Outsourcing Snafu The coalition of the billing has real limits. by Max Boot March 31, 2005 Ever since Ronald Reagan proclaimed in his 1981 inaugural address that government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem, leaders at all levels of government, Democrats and Republicans alike, have been outsourcing as much work as possible to the private sector. This is generally a good idea, but when it comes to the military, this trend may have gone too far. Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors, estimates that there are 20,000 to 30,000 civilians in Iraq performing traditional military functions, from maintaining weapons systems to guarding supply convoys. If you add foreigners involved in reconstruction and oil work, the total soars to 50,000 to 75,000. To put this into perspective: All of Washington's allies combined account for 23,000 troops in Iraq. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Singer quips that President George W. Bush's 'coalition of the willing' might thus be more aptly described as the 'coalition of the billing.' Let us stipulate that most contractors are upstanding, hardworking individuals who perform valuable and dangerous work. At least 175 have been killed and 900 wounded in Iraq. But their labor has been tarnished by scandals and snafus too numerous to ignore. Oil-services giant Halliburton and the security firm Custer Battles, among others, have been accused of swindling U.S. taxpayers. Other contractors are said to have been simply ineffective. Vinnell Corp. did such a poor job of training Iraqi army recruits that half of its first battalion walked off the job. The Army had to step in to perform the work itself. Other companies have been accused of human rights violations: Interrogators from CACI International were in the middle of the Abu Ghraib mess. And still others have caused major problems by failing to coordinate with the military chain of command. The most notorious example was the decision by four Blackwater employees to enter Fallouja on March 31, 2004, without notifying the local Marine garrison. Their well-publicized deaths in an ambush forced the Marines into a costly offensive to try to regain control of the city. There is nothing new or nefarious about privatizing military support functions. But, in Iraq, the contractors aren't just building latrines or staffing mess halls. They're also running around with assault rifles and black body armor performing tactical functions. Many are well-trained U.S. or British veterans, but others are Rambo wannabes or sordid desperados. Among the mercenaries who have surfaced in Iraq are South Africans who were members of apartheid-era death squads and Chileans who served in Pinochet's security services. When U.S. service members are accused of wrongdoing, they are investigated and, if necessary, court-martialed. That's not the case with civilians who are generally not covered by the laws of their home countries for crimes committed abroad. The Iraqi legal system could hold them to account, but in practice Baghdad won't do anything that might lead to an exodus of foreign firms. Dozens of U.S. and British soldiers have been prosecuted for misconduct in Iraq - but not a single contractor. A lack of accountability leads to occurrences such as those described by four former Custer Battles employees who claim that poorly trained Kurds on the firm's payroll killed innocent motorists. In one incident, a guard supposedly fired his AK-47 into a passenger car to clear a traffic jam. In another, an aggressive driver in a giant pickup truck allegedly pulverized a sedan with children inside. When true (the firm denies any wrongdoing), such incidents only create more insurgent recruits. U.S. policymakers argue that they have to rely on private help because the U.S. armed forces simply aren't big enough to do everything, and allies have not made up the shortfall. But that's an argument for expanding the armed forces, not for hiring a lot of freelance gunslingers. Administration officials complain that a bigger army is too expensive, but are they really saving money by relying on privateers? The most valued contractors are experienced former U.S. Special Forces operatives whose training cost the Pentagon hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are being lured out of uniform by the promise of making $500 to $1,000 a day. (If they stay in the service they'll be lucky to make $140 a day.) And where does that money come from? Pretty much all the foreign firms in Iraq are paid by the U.S. Treasury. So the government is in competition with itself for its most skilled and hard-to-replace soldiers. Does this sort of outsourcing really make sense?
NY Sun, Cheney on Chalabi
New York Sun Cheney Would Meet With Chalabi, Though He's Not Choosing Sides BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun April 4, 2005 Vice President Cheney, in a wide-ranging meeting with the editorial board of The New York Sun, extended a friendly signal to Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose relations with Washington had appeared frayed. Mr. Cheney made his comments Friday during a meeting with the editors at the Plaza Hotel. During the 45-minute session, he also expressed optimism about winning Democrats over to support the administration's plans for personal accounts as part of Social Security. The vice president was careful to say that the American government does not want to pick the leaders of Iraq, a job he said should be left to the Iraqis. But in response to a question from the Sun about whether senior American diplomats in Baghdad should meet with Mr. Chalabi as they do with other Iraqi politicians, the vice president said, I know Mr. Chalabi myself. I've met with him. I wouldn't have any problems meeting with him today. If there's any prohibition against meeting with him, I'm unaware of it. Mr. Cheney's remarks may counter any impression in Baghdad that Mr. Chalabi is somehow persona non grata with the Bush administration. Mr. Chalabi has been accused, often anonymously and with little substantiation, of committing bank fraud in Jordan, faking pre-war intelligence, and leaking American secrets to Iran. Mr. Chalabi has filed suit in federal court in Washington against the kingdom of Jordan, accusing it of improperly acting against his Jordanian bank and of smearing his reputation with the Bush administration. He has also offered to defend himself at a congressional hearing. Mr. Cheney said, We've also worked hard to make clear to everybody over there that we are not in the business of trying to pick winners in the elections in Iraq. ... We have been very careful not to get into the business of voicing support for any one particular individual. The Iraqis'll get it sorted out. For Mr. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, the remarks by the vice president come at an important moment. More than two months after the Iraqis voted in an election, the politicians elected to the National Assembly are still bargaining over who will emerge in top government jobs. On Thursday of last week, a commission appointed by President Bush cleared the Iraqi National Congress of any connection to a source called curveball who was accused of fabricating pre-war intelligence, though the commission's report did fault one other unnamed source it said was associated with the Iraqi National Congress. On Social Security, Mr. Cheney said the president's ideas to make the retirement program more solvent may yet garner support from Democrats in Congress. I think there's more willingness on the Democratic side to talk about this than has yet surfaced, he said. I've talked privately with members who at this point don't want to be quoted. They're not about to step up and say anything, because the heat is on, on the other side, not to break ranks. But I think that it will be far more difficult for them to say, 'We're not going to participate in the debate, we're not willing to talk to you.' Mr. Cheney rattled off a list of proposals for fixing Social Security. He mentioned Senator Hagel's plan, which would raise the retirement age, and Senator Lindsey Graham's plan, which would raise the ceiling on the amount of salary that is subject to payroll tax. He mentioned a plan by Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Sununu that would create private accounts averaging 6.4 percentage points of the current 12.4% payroll tax - accounts significantly larger than the 4 percentage-point maximum accounts that Mr. Bush spoke of in his State of the Union address. He also mentioned a plan put forth by a mutual fund executive, Robert Pozen, a Democrat, that would index Social Security benefits to prices instead of wages for higher-income workers. All of these plans ultimately need to be on the table to be discussed, he said. We have not embraced any specific one of them. The vice president said he thought the administration had been very successful so far in getting people to understand that Social Security has a solvency problem. But he said, we've really just joined the debate in terms of personal accounts as a solution. For us to be effective, obviously, we're going to have to do battle with AARP, Mr. Cheney said. They're out there peddling the notion that somehow what the president wants to do is quote destroy Social Security. He said that AARP's youngest members are 50, and that the Bush administration is saying that no one 55 or over would be affected by changes in Social Security. There's a very narrow slice of AARP membership that's going to be affected by this, he said. It's about their kids and grandkids. Asked about the prospects for the Republican Party in New York City, Mr. Cheney said that he had been pleased by the 2004
Max Boot, The Friend We Betrayed, LAT
Los Angeles Times The Friend We Betrayed Max Boot April 7, 2005 In 1987, after he was exonerated of corruption charges, former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan issued the classic plea of the wronged man: Which office do I go to to get my reputation back? Whichever office it is, Ahmad Chalabi may want to apply there as well. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress has been the most unfairly maligned man on the planet in recent years. If you believe what you read, Chalabi is a con man, a crook and, depending on which day of the week it is, either an American or Iranian stooge. The most damning charge is that he cooked up the phony intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq. In the words of that noted foreign policy sage Maureen Dowd: Ahmad Chalabi conned his neocon pals, thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun it needed to sell the war. Such calumnies are so ingrained by now that La Dowd published that sentence on Sunday, three days after the release of the Robb-Silberman report that refutes it. The bipartisan commission headed by Chuck Robb and Laurence Silberman did not give Chalabi a totally clean bill of health. It found that two INC-supplied defectors were fabricators. But it also determined that the most notorious liar popularly linked to the INC - a defector known as Curveball who provided false information on Saddam Hussein's biological weapons - was not influenced by, controlled by, or connected to the INC. In fact, over all, the Robb-Silberman report concluded, CIA's postwar investigations revealed that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on prewar assessments. Translation: The CIA's attempts to scapegoat Chalabi for its own failures won't wash. This is only one of many unsubstantiated accusations against Chalabi. Last August, for instance, an Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for Chalabi and his nephew, Salem Chalabi. Ahmad was supposedly guilty of counterfeiting, Salem of having an Iraqi official murdered. Within weeks the bizarre charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Unfortunately, no court of law has examined the accusations made by anonymous U.S. spooks that Chalabi told the Iranian government that one of its codes had been broken by the United States. U.S. officials claimed that they found out Chalabi was the source of the leak because they were able to decode a message to that effect to Tehran. But why would Iranian agents use the compromised code to transmit that information? And how would a foreign national such as Chalabi get access to secret intercepts? Guess we're supposed to take the U.S. intelligence community's word for all this, even though its judgment has been discredited in every outside inquiry. Then there's the charge that Chalabi was guilty of fraud at a Jordanian bank he once owned. A secret Jordanian military tribunal convicted him in absentia in 1992. Chalabi argues that this was a frame-up by Jordanians eager to seize his assets and curry favor with Hussein. The truth may come out in a lawsuit that Chalabi has filed in the U.S. against the Jordanian government. In the meantime, claims that he's a swindler must be treated with skepticism. This man risked his life and his fortune to overthrow one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century. He deserves better. More important, the U.S. would have done better in Iraq if it had been listening to Chalabi as much as conspiracy buffs claimed. In early 2003, the Bush administration ignored Chalabi's warnings that liberation should not be allowed to turn into occupation. Chalabi wanted to set up an interim government right away. The administration refused on the grounds that exiles had no standing in Iraq. So instead that well-known Iraqi, L. Paul Bremer III, was anointed potentate. His mistakes, which Chalabi criticized, resulted in a critical loss of momentum. A year later, the U.S. finally appointed a government headed by Chalabi's cousin and rival, Iyad Allawi. If an exile could be appointed in 2004, why not in 2003? But don't worry about Chalabi. Unlike Secretary Donovan, he's done just fine. Contrary to CIA reports that he had no constituency, he has positioned himself at the center of Iraqi politics. He was a leading candidate for prime minister and will probably get a Cabinet post. On second thought, Chalabi is better off not getting his old reputation - that of a U.S. ally - back. Being reviled in Washington may be the best gift that any Iraqi politician could receive. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Thomas Joscelyn, 1981 Papal Assassination Attempt, Weekly Standard
Crime of the Century How the elite media and the CIA failed to Investigate the 1981 papal assassination attempt. by Thomas Joscelyn 04/07/2005 12:00:00 AM A STUNNING REVELATION buzzed throughout Italy last week. According to two Italian newspapers, German government officials had found proof that the Soviet Union ordered the May 13, 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The recently discovered documents--which are mainly correspondences between East German Stasi spies and their Bulgarian counterparts--reportedly discuss the Soviet assassination order as well as efforts to cover-up any traces of involvement by Bulgaria's spooks. If the documents are as advertised, then they put an end to one of the great whodunits of the 20th century. The U.S. media has all but ignored this incredible story; which isn't, actually, much of a surprise. Indeed, the elite media in this country never wanted to investigate the threads of evidence pointing to Bulgarian, and thus Soviet, involvement. What is surprising, however, is that in one of the greatest U.S. intelligence failures of all-time, neither did the CIA. In the days following the attempt, a clean and simple narrative quickly emerged. The would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, was a member of the ultra-right Turkish neofascist group, the Grey Wolves. That part was true, but Italian investigators were also turning up evidence that Agca was really a false flag recruit for another group. The New York Times quickly tried to squash any notion of a broader conspiracy. "Police Lack Clues to Foreign Links Of Suspect in Shooting of the Pope," read one front-page headline on May 17, 1981. Another front-page headline the next day blared, "Turks Say Suspect in Papal Attack Is Tied to Rightist Web of Intrigue." Just over a week later the Times would produce an investigative piece spanning several nations and drawing on the reporting of nine journalists. Titled, "Trail of Mehmet Ali Agca: 6 Years of Neofascist Ties," the piece began, "For at least six years, Mehmet Ali Agca . . . has been associated with a xenophobic, fanatically nationalist, neofascist network steeped in violence . . . " [emphasis added] The article continued, "reports by a team of New York Times correspondents in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States show a clear pattern of connections between the gaunt, taciturn Mr. Agca and an international alliance of right-wing Turkish extremists." [emphasis added] Nor, according to the Times, was there any evidence of a conspiracy: "Intensive investigations . . . have so far failed to turn up the slightest evidence of any 'international conspiracy' to murder the Pope, despite confident assertions of one by the Italian press a week ago. Mr. Agca is not known to have spoken to a single non-Turkish terrorist in the last year or so, let alone to have acted as the agent of any established group in the attack on John Paul." [emphasis added] The Times admitted that Agca's "precise motives [were] unclear," but was confident that "much has been learned of the origins of this previously obscure young man" and that "a fairly complete picture has emerged of his remarkable Odyssey." The Times message was clear: there is no evidence of a conspiracy and there is no need to investigate any further. The Times was not alone in its reporting. Similar reports were published by the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and virtually every other major newspaper investigating the story. All of the early reports painted Agca as "neofascist," or an "Islamic extremist," or as a lone wolf with ties to organized crime. AND IF IT WERE UP TO the elite media the story would have ended there. But, something was wrong with this narrative. Too many threads of evidence pointed to a wider plot that involved the Soviet-controlled Bulgarian intelligence service. Daily Italian newspapers, citing high level politicians and magistrate judges, regularly reported on the
Mylroie, NY Sun, Iraq's Weapons
New York SunCircular ReasoningBy Laurie MylroieApril 13, 2005The recently released Robb-Silverman Report on weapons of mass destruction contains excellent suggestions on how American intelligence capabilities might be improved. However, the section dealing with Iraq is gravely flawed. It is artificially constrained. The Commission itself states: "[W]e were not asked to determine whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction" (emphasis in original). That project, as the Commission explains, was already done by the Iraq Survey Group. "[O]ur mission," the Commission affirms, "is to investigate the reasons why the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments were so different from what the Iraq Survey Group [ISG] found after the war."There are three possible answers: the prewar assessments were wrong; the ISG report is wrong; or some combination of the two. Yet the Commission's mandate did not allow it to question the ISG's findings, or so the report suggests. Thus, one possible explanation was eliminated by administrative fiat.The ISG concluded that Iraq destroyed its proscribed weapons in 1991, and the Commission's apparent mandate requiring it to accept that conclusion is a fundamental lapse. It contravenes the Commission's own emphasis on the need for competitive analysis and the necessity for analysts vigorously to explore alternative explanations.An alternative explanation exists as to why weapons caches were not found in Iraq: some were destroyed and some were moved to Syria, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld suggested in the months following the fall of Saddam's regime. Indeed, the director of the Pentagon office that analyzes satellite imagery explained that before the war began and during its early days, there was an "uptick" in truck traffic from Iraq to Syria. Israeli intelligence believes significant material was sent to Syria. And the ISG itself felt that it could not conclusively exclude this possibility.Yet the Commission did just that in a little-noticed footnote. Footnote 724 to the chapter on Iraq states, "Given the overall findings of the ISG, there was nothing left to move by March 2003, save possibly, some pre-1991 CW [chemical weapons] shells. Therefore, the conclusion that militarily significant stockpiles of CW or BW [biological weapons] could not have been moved to Syria just before the war necessarily follows from the ISG's overall findings about the state of Iraq's WMD after 1991."This is a logical fallacy: circulus in probando or circular reasoning. One cannot legitimately use the conclusion of an argument as one of its premises.The Commission's widely touted statement, "We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," is itself circulus in probando, premised as it is on the unquestioned acceptance of the ISG's published conclusion that Iraq destroyed its WMD stockpiles years ago.Indeed, one important finding was stricken from the ISG report, because the State Department objected to it. The ISG learned that in the mid-1990s, Syria began co-operating with Iraq on its WMD programs. That finding makes even more plausible the notion that Iraq moved material to Syria just before the war began, as it would have been a natural outgrowth of the established co-operation between the two Baathist states.If the Commission had considered the work of the ISG, it would have found many problems, including those that led to its creation, and which cast doubt on its conclusions. Initially, American officials expected that large caches of proscribed weapons would be found in Iraq. The job of finding them fell to ill trained soldiers, who did not know Arabic, but nonetheless often operated without translators, and who did not use the expertise available to them. Senior people in the relevant WMD areas were available by video conference at all times to advise on suspicious objects that the troops might find, but this expertise was not utilized. Soldiers would go to a site, find something suspicious, return 48 hours later, and it would be gone. Moreover, systematic, organized looting of many suspected weapons sites occurred then.When the ISG was dispatched to Iraq in June 2003, it was still assumed that significant weapons caches would be found. The most knowledgeable individuals were members of UNSCOM (the U.N. Special Commission), who had been responsible for Iraq's weapons programs from 1991 until 1999.The U.S. intelligence community, however, wanted the glory of finding the weapons themselves and largely excluded UNSCOM members. Moreover, those going to Iraq received hardship pay. It was not uncommon for managers to send themselves, rather than more expert staff. The ISG, as initially composed, contained five to 10 genuine experts, in the view of one well-informed American official (that changed after Charles Duelfer, deputy
Jim Hoagland, Hammering the Wrong Nails
Washington Post Hammering the Wrong Nails The 9/11 Commission's 'Solution' Won't Fix the Real Intelligence Failures By Jim Hoagland April 17, 2005 Richard A. Posner does not simply point to feet of clay. He attacks them with hammer, tongs and clarity of insight when it comes to the dangers of the ragged overhaul of U.S. intelligence that Congress and the Bush administration now pursue. By Posner's lights, the Sept. 11 commission, with the help of indolent and uncritical media, stampeded panicky politicians into a premature, ill-considered commitment to an intelligence reform that will do little to improve this nation's security against surprise attack. By declaring relatives of the Sept. 11 terrorists' victims its partners and giving them a platform, the commission lent a further unserious note to the project. . . . One can feel for the families' loss and understand their indignation . . . without thinking that the status of being a victim's relative is a qualification for opining on how the victim's death might have been prevented. And he points to this fundamental flaw in the way the commission was organized: To combine an investigation of the attacks (the causes, the missed opportunities, and the responses) with recommendations for preventing future attacks is the same mistake as combining intelligence and policy. The means believed available for solving a problem influence how the problem is understood and described. This is the policymaker's equivalent of every problem looking like a nail if you have only a hammer: If bureaucratic reorganization is the only obvious answer, bureaucratic failure had to be the problem from the outset. Ergo, blame the spies for intelligence failure and centralize: Create a director of national intelligence (DNI) and draw a new organization chart for the nation's overlapping but uncommunicative spy agencies. Posner, a federal appeals court judge in Chicago, a law professor and a prolific author of books on public policy, makes these points in Preventing Surprise Attacks, a bold and welcome antidote to the commission fatigue settling over a Washington awash with reports and congressional hearings on intelligence failure and reform. It provides the starting point for a useful reassessment of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States nine months after that body's report was issued and as President Bush's first director of national intelligence prepares to take office. Posner's short book asks big questions that were skirted in last week's minutiae-drenched hearings on the nominations of John Negroponte to be DNI and John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations. Those hearings shifted attention away from where it should now be focused. The senators' questions and statements suggested that improving intelligence and protecting it from politicization will provide a shield against surprise attacks and other international harm. But that approach treats intelligence as an exact science that produces clear truths. It vastly overestimates the perfectibility and efficiency of centralized bureaucracies in general and spy agencies in particular. The senators also inadvertently deemphasize the urgent need to fund and organize the civil defense and other first responder programs that will be needed to battle terrorist attacks that do get through. Negroponte dutifully promised to call 'em as he sees 'em and to give the president the unvarnished truth. That pacified the senators, who could have more usefully spent the time reading Posner's explanation as to why adding one more rung in the ladder of command will ensure that less information will reach the top than before. The careerist imperative in Washington is based on the known reluctance of civil servants, even those not involved with classified materials, to share information with their superiors, the judge writes. Instead, the bureaucracy strives to maintain the knowledge deficit that a political appointee brings to a new post. A knowledgeable policymaker quickly becomes his or her own intelligence agent, developing outside sources and discounting what subordinates provide. That sounds cynical. But it has a ring of truth. Congress can pretend to be no better. The overlapping, overextended and highly politicized oversight committees that deal with intelligence continue to resist reforming themselves. They instead shift blame to the spies and the rest of the administration and the conflicts between them. Posner paints with such vivid and broad strokes that he at times goes astray. He underestimates, for example, the potential for civil liberties abuses that would accompany the centralization of domestic intelligence in an MI-5-type organization. But Posner's demystification of the Sept. 11 commission and of the role of the Sept. 11 families in the massive public relations effort to win public support before the report could be read is timely and pertinent. You can't read this book and come
Saddam's Men Strike Back in River of Blood, London Times
The guerrillas blew up a mosque and posted notices saying that Shias should leave town or die. The Shia political parties started a press campaign - but it was dismissed by the Interior Ministry, whose officials said that the whole affair was a tribal feud. London Times April 22, 2005 Saddam's men strike back in purge that left river of blood From James Hider in Baghdad ABU QADDUM lays out the pictures of mutilated bodies dredged from the Tigris River like a player dealing cards. Some had their hands cut off, others are headless or burnt. Another was strangled, with his tongue lolling out. He thinks one bloated, slime-covered corpse might be his younger brother. The shocking images come from Iraq's new killing fields - the small town of Madain just 20 miles from Baghdad. In other times the massacre might have prompted calls for international intervention. But there are already 150,000 US and British troops in Iraq and this was done under their noses. Abu Qaddum's pictures are a terrifying testament to the chaos of Iraq. Madain has had no police force since a mob of criminals and insurgents burnt down the police station last year. The police fled. Sunni guerrillas quickly took over, running the town as their own criminal fiefdom and randomly killing Shia residents, whom they considered infidels and US sympathisers. Then they launched an all-out attempt to purge the town of its Shias. News of this ethnic cleansing leaked out in confusing rumours. Shia officials spoke last weekend of a massive hostage-taking. But when Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos stormed the town they found car bombs, weapons and a training camp - but no kidnappers and no hostages. The whole story was dismissed as scaremongering. Then the photographs of the bodies emerged and with them the tale of Abu Qaddum - a resident who survived the massacre and this week alerted President Talabani. I think there may be 300 bodies in the Tigris, he told The Times yesterday. He recounted how, for the past year, Sunni insurgents have built bases in abandoned farmhouses in the lush river plains south of Baghdad. First the gangs attacked Madain's police station. An armed mob set fire to the building and the police cars. Emboldened by the lack of a response from the US-led occupation, the guerrillas then started using a former Republican Guard base as a training camp. More guerrillas dribbled in, many affiliated to the extremist group Ansa al-Sunna and led by a Syrian called Annas Abu Ayman. They installed a reign of terror, kidnapping government employees and members of Shia political parties. Sometimes the bodies surfaced in the palm groves, more often people just vanished. When US forces stormed the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah in November, more fighters arrived in Madain, on the eastern fringes of a lawless area known as the Triangle of Death. During Ramadan last autumn, throngs of Sunni guerrillas mustered around a mosque, denouncing Shias as traitors and spies, lambasting them for not joining the resistance. Abu Qaddum said that the Shias did not respond until the guerrillas assassinated their leader, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Madaini, as he headed to prayers. His car was intercepted by a convoy of 15 vehicles packed with gunmen, who riddled it with bullets. The sheikh, his son and three others were killed. The Shias went to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, their spiritual leader in the holy city of Najaf. Abu Qaddum said that the septuagenarian cleric, who is an avowed moderate, told them that their relatives were martyrs but that they should stay their hand: the terrorists wanted the Shias to attack to spark a civil war - which would be worse. On February 10 a convoy of police finally arrived in Madain. At first the officers found the place calm. But news of their arrival had been leaked - even Abu Qaddum knew that they were coming - and the guerrillas sprang a well-planned ambush. Many officers died and the wounded who were captured were doused in petrol and burnt to death. After that, the kidnapping and killing accelerated. They were taking two or three people a day, killing people in the street, going into people's houses to drag them out, Abu Qaddum said. The guerillas also set up checkpoints on the road to Baghdad, executing government officials when they could find them, and looting and burning lorries. People were too scared to go to market for fear of being seized. At night families stood guard in two-hour shifts. Six weeks ago Abu Qaddum's brother went to find a doctor for his sick wife and was never seen again. The guerrillas blew up a mosque and posted notices saying that Shias should leave town or die. The Shia political parties started a press campaign - but it was dismissed by the Interior Ministry, whose officials said that the whole affair was a tribal feud. When Iraqi troops finally moved in they found no sign of the horror. They asked through loudspeakers for witnesses to show them where the terrorists and
Chalabi Interview, CNN, Text
CNN LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER 12:00 PM EST April 24, 2005 Sunday TRANSCRIPT: 042401CN.V47 JOHN KING, GUEST HOST: It's noon in Washington . . . I'm John King, sitting in for Wolf Blitzer . . . A bit early I spoke with former Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi who was involved in those negotiations about the new government, the deadly insurgency and more. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KING: Ahmed Chalabi, thank you so much for joining us today on LATE EDITION from Baghdad. You are just moments removed from the latest meeting of the interim assembly, trying to reach an agreement on the new Iraqi government. No announcement of any deals, sir. What is the holdup to reaching a new government? AHMED CHALABI, FORMER IRAQI GOVERNING COUNCIL MEMBER: We are now down to the representation of Sunnis in the government and also on the distribution of responsibilities within the cabinet. These are the two issues that are in question now, and negotiations are going on. KING: And when, sir, do you think those negotiations will be resolved? As you know, one of the key questions is we've seen an escalation of violence in recent weeks, and many say the post-election calm, if you will, has given way almost three months later to a political vacuum, essentially encouraging the insurgents, if you will, because there is no new government in place as yet. CHALABI: We need a government immediately, and the delay in forming the cabinet has encouraged the terrorists, and I believe that we must move forward very, very quickly. KING: When you say very quickly and you say the disagreement is on the responsibilities, what is the single hangup? Is it over one individual? Is it over Mr. al-Jaafari? CHALABI: No. There is no disagreement. It's a matter of negotiations about the division of responsibilities. Mr. Jaafari is the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance List, which has the majority in parliament. And he has the full support of the list, and I believe that he will form the cabinet. KING: You mentioned that the lack of a government is encouraging the insurgents. Another alarming thing to many here in the United States, and I'd like your perspective, is that there continues to be criticism of the Iraqi security forces. The Pentagon from time to time says those forces are being better trained and better equipped, and yet when we see the violence that we have seen just over the past week and including on this day, sir, many question whether those forces are aggressive as they need to be in rooting out the insurgency. CHALABI: The men and women of the Iraqi security forces are very brave, very dedicated people. It is the leadership that is lacking. We need leadership, and it doesn't come by reinstituting Baathists and Saddam loyalists into the service. This has been done too much under the previous government. We need to have desist from doing that. And we need to have people lead the forces who are loyal to the new order, who are loyal to the Democratic government of Iraq. KING: You say, sir, desist, allowing Baathists, former officers under Saddam Hussein to take leadership roles in the security forces. You know full well, sir, on that issue, you are at odds with the United States including the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who recently traveled to your country to warn against such a purge. The Pentagon would say it is those officers with the experience from Saddam Hussein's army who are beginning to help the security forces. You say purge them out. Would that not extend the period of time it takes the forces to be up and ready? And, in fact, then extend the period of time your country will need U.S. troops? CHALABI: I say that this policy has not worked so far. We have heard this mantra for many, many times. Where is the security of these people are effective? It is a sham issue here. The people who are doing the terrorism are sometimes close to the leaders and the commanders of the security forces. And the U.S. military admits that many times. These are not military issues. These are political issues. The Sunni population of Iraq will not be confined to Baathists to represent them. I believe that there are Iraqis from all communities who are not Baathists, who are victims of Saddam, who can actually lead the forces. We are not calling for a wholesale purge. We are calling for not giving leadership positions to people who are high up in Saddam's pecking order in the security services. And we say that loyalty, if it does count, it's very important to have loyal and competent people in these top jobs. KING: Another question, sir, facing the new government will be the issue of amnesty. The interim president, Mr. Talabani was on this program earlier this month. I want you to listen to what he said on the idea of offering amnesty to those who have been involved in the insurgency but not those who have attacked Iraqi civilians. Let's listen to Mr. Talabani first. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JALAL TALABANI, IRAQI
Attack Cut Short WMD Hunt, Independent
Independent (UK) Zarqawi attack on inspector cut short the hunt for WMD By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor 28 April 2005 The American who led the hunt for Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction has revealed that the investigation was cut short after he was targeted by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant leader in an attack that left two people dead. The head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, has reported that his investigation into the possible transfer of WMD to Syria had been wound up because of the declining security situation. But, in an interview with The Independent, Mr Duelfer said that Zarqawi had claimed responsibility for the car-bomb attack on his convoy on 6 November 2004. A car-bomb tried to get me and my follow car, Mr Duelfer said. Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded. My hearing's not been right since. Mr Duelfer, in an addendum to the final report which runs to thousands of pages, concluded that there was no evidence that WMD had been moved to Syria by Saddam Hussein. The report contradicted assertions by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, who claimed after the war that the lack of WMD in Iraq might be explained this way. Mr Duelfer reported just before the US presidential election last November that his 1,500-strong group had found no evidence that Saddam had possessed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. His dossier demolished claims by the British government and Bush administration issued before the Iraq war that Saddam's weapons were a threat to the US and Britain. Mr Duelfer denied suggestions - including from an Australian colleague, the weapons inspector Rod Barton - that he had been subjected to political pressure by the US or British authorities. He confirmed that John Scarlett, the head of MI6, had mentioned some nuggets that could be put into his interim report, issued in March last year. I looked at them, and didn't include them, he said. But he added that he did not construe such suggestions to be political pressure. I got a lot of suggestions from governments with big intelligence operations. It would be foolish of me not to look at them. There was political interest, but that's not the same as political pressure, he said. There was a desire on the part of capitals to find WMD. It would have made everyone's life much easier. But the view was: let the chips fall where they may. Asked what he had achieved in his 18 months in Iraq, Mr Duelfer said he had built up a comprehensive picture of Saddam's strategic intent. He believes that given the opportunity, which would have come with the lifting of UN sanctions, the Iraqi dictator was poised to resume his banned weapons activities. I think there's a decent set of data on the table. After hours of debriefing more than 100 Iraqi scientists and experts, I think I understand the motivation of the regime. He explained that his attempt to comprehend the workings of Saddam's regime had led him to the oil-for-food scandal. In his report, he contended that Saddam's government siphoned more than $2bn (£1.05bn) in illicit bribes and kickbacks from companies that traded with Iraq through the UN's humanitarian oil-for-food scheme. Six investigations are now under way into the scandal. Mr Duelfer, who backed the invasion of Iraq, said his team had drawn up a timeline of international events in order to understand the mindset of the isolated Iraqi leader. We wanted to know what was he looking at when he made this or that decision, for example, going to war with Iran, he said. Asked why he had not gone to such trouble to understand the mindset of the Iraqi dictator in the 1990s, when he was deputy head of the UN inspection agency Unscom, Mr Duelfer argued that Iraq's obstruction of the arms monitors had not been conducive to such an approach. The patterns of behaviour reinforced assumptions, he said. He also recognised that because of the lack of relations between America and Iraq in the 1990s, the lack of direct intelligence from the ground was also an impediment. There was a systemic problem in the intelligence community, he noted. What I think I missed was how high Saddam's priority was to get out of sanctions. From 1991, it was the number one priority. Mr Duelfer has retired as a weapons inspector but will write an account of his time in Iraq. His next project is as consultant to a mission planning to resume manned flights to the Moon. * Gunmen have assassinated Lamia Abed Kha- dawi, a member of Iraq's National Assembly. Ms Khadawi, who belonged to the caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party, was shot dead outside her house in eastern Baghdad. She is the first person in the 275-seat assembly to be killed.
Jim Hoagland, US-Iraqi Political Balance
Washington Post Limestone Touchstone By Jim Hoagland April 28, 2005 American soldiers fight in Iraq to help secure a sovereign, democratic government there. But what happens when those aspirations come into conflict with short-term U.S. security needs that may affect the safety of those soldiers? That dilemma is at the center of a smoldering quarrel in Baghdad over a building coveted by both the U.S. military and the Iraqi National Assembly. The fate of the building -- now the physical embodiment of a larger, looming collision of U.S. and Iraqi national interests -- was bucked all the way up to President Bush's principal advisers at a recent White House strategy meeting. History suggests that tension between a receding occupying power and rising nationalist politicians eager to take control of their country is both inevitable and manageable -- if the two sides work to find common ground. For the Iraqis, that means showing pragmatism and patience, as well as determination, as they reclaim full sovereignty. For the Americans, that means yielding power to those politicians more rapidly than may be comfortable and more gracefully than is now the case. That is where the four-story limestone complex with 300 rooms -- built under Iraq's monarchy to house a national assembly -- enters the story of Iraq's continuing liberation. The building lies just outside Baghdad's Green Zone, where U.S. officials live and work and where they once ran an occupation authority that was formally disbanded last June. The authority designated the structure as the future home of the Ministry of Defense and refurbished it at a cost of at least $30 million -- all without consulting the interim Governing Council. Iraq's 1958 revolution prevented the building from being used by an elected assembly. But its historical purpose, as well as its politically untainted location and its abundant office space, attracted the attention of the 275-member National Assembly that was elected on Jan. 30. The assembly has been meeting in rented rooms at a convention center inside the Green Zone. A handful of incidents in which assembly members allege they were abused by U.S. troops who control access to the Green Zone has dramatized the assembly's urgent desire to find a new home -- a desire that has now been expressed in a resolution and a letter of eviction to the Defense Ministry. But this conflict is much larger than a dispute over prime real estate. It symbolizes the elected assembly's determination to establish control over Iraq's military and intelligence services, which have been formed by U.S. authorities from the ruins of the ousted regime. The question really is who the Iraqi army and intelligence agency will show loyalty to: the United States or the Iraqi government the United States says is sovereign, one assembly member said by telephone from Baghdad. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's Shiite allies view the Iraqi military and espionage commands as riddled with spies, saboteurs and crooks who have fooled or co-opted their American sponsors. Only a housecleaning will give a new government the legitimacy it needs to defeat the insurgency, the Shiite camp asserts. In a surprise visit this month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned the Iraqis in public and private against tampering with the existing intelligence and military commands. He voiced similar concerns in the recent meeting of the Principals Committee at the White House that considered the National Assembly's action. Moving the military operations center from the disputed limestone building would disrupt ongoing operations and expose U.S. soldiers to increased danger, military commanders argue to the Pentagon. Any hopes of drawing down troops this year depend on moving ahead with our current efforts, a senior official told me. But Bush aides recognize that at the end of the day, Iraqi sovereignty must be accepted and recognized. They took no decision to fight the National Assembly over the building. Instead, a pragmatic compromise that would involve sharing the building is under discussion in Baghdad, according to Americans and Iraqis. Two years after the end of major combat operations in Iraq, a new political balance struggles to be born behind the shield of 140,000 American troops. The Kurds and Shiites, persecuted by Saddam Hussein and betrayed by past U.S. governments, have yet to find other grounds for mutual trust. The struggle in Iraq is no longer one pitting an evil dictator against helpless victims. It is now a struggle in which groups with just causes spar with each other -- and with Washington -- for advantage and over judgment calls about the future. That no doubt makes these differences more complex, but no less vital to resolve with common purpose. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Rise of 'New Baath Party,' Independent
Independent (UK) Bomb attacks on the rise as 'New Baath party' is born By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad 03 May 2005 Flames and smoke rose over Baghdad from a blazing building after an explosion that was aimed at a police patrol killed six and wounded seven passers-by instead. We saw a minivan parked outside an electrical goods store from the morning, said Abu Zahra, who has a stand selling refreshments, yesterday. At 10, we heard the car blow up and it threw me to the ground. I nearly choked from the smoke. I saw at least five bodies scattered in the street. Meanwhile, US and Iraqi army forces sealed off the northern town of Tal Afar, the scene of heavy fighting in the past, and imposed a curfew after a suicide bomb driven into the funeral tent of a Kurdish official killed 30 people and wounded 50 at the weekend. The scale of the continuing violence in Iraq over the past year was underlined by a US report on the 4 March shooting by American troops of Italian security agent Nicola Calipari, the rescuer of the journalist Giuliana Sgrena who had been held hostage. It also reveals there were 15,527 attacks on coalition forces, largely American, from July 2004 to late March 2005. Some 2,404 attacks took place in Baghdad from 1 November to 12 March. The report was first issued by the US in a heavily censored form with sensitive information blocked out. But an Italian computer specialist discovered that the censorship was easy to remove. The picture painted by the uncensored military report is in sharp contrast to the more optimistic views given by the Pentagon to the US media. The bombings in the past week underline that the insurgents have lost none of their ability to carry out attacks, almost always without regard for civilian casualties, all over Iraq. In the three months since the elections on 30 January there was a drop in American losses which led to official optimism that the guerrilla war was on the wane. There has been an increase in the number of assassination attempts against Iraqi senior security officers based on precise intelligence about their movements. A bomb yesterday slightly wounded Major-General Fuleih Rasheed, the commander of a police commando unit linked to the interior ministry, and two of his men in the Huriya district of northwest Baghdad. The bomb exploded as Maj-Gen Rasheed's convoy raced past the point. A third bomb in Baghdad in the Zayouna district killed two policemen and wounded 10 people. It is not clear how far the wave of bombings, some 17 of them in Baghdad, is a response to the formation of a new government dominated by the Shia and the Kurds. The Sunni community, the backbone of the insurgency, received few ministerial positions. The insurgents are less interested in participation in the present government than in direct talks with the US, a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces and the right to rebuild the Baath party. In Sunni Arab towns and cities a so-called New Baath party is beginning to emerge and is said to be very well organised. The attack on the Kurdish funeral in Tal Afar, a Shia Turkoman town west of Mosul, will sharpen sectarian and ethnic differences in the area. The bomber blew himself up as Kurds gathered to mourn Sayed Taleb Sayed Wahab, an official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), who was murdered three days earlier. The Kurds see Tal Afar as being a stronghold of the resistance. There are more than 250 dangerous terrorists there, Khasro Goran, the KDP leader and deputy governor in Mosul, said before the attack on the funeral. He was trying to get US support for an Iraqi army assault on the town. Mr Goran said he had received a sympathetic hearing from the American military when he proposed a joint assault. There are two Iraqi National Guard battalions, whose men are all Kurds, in the region, supported by a police commando force Wolf, which is mostly Shia. A problem for the US is that political differences in northern Iraq are based on ethnic differences between Kurds, Turkoman and Sunni Arab. The Kurds are moving back into lands west of Mosul known as Sinjar from which they were evicted by Saddam Hussein.
David Ignatius, DoD's Quiet Transformation Iraq News Note
NB: The concepts described below have long been the view of Iraq News. If it is US policy to change the Middle East, then people have to know the region and know it well. That may be obvious, but it is inconvenient. So it is telling that the impulse for change comes from DoD and not from other bureaucracies (ie CIA, DoS), which do not pay that terrible price in terms of human losses for the lack of expertise and the missteps to which it leads. Washington Post A Quiet Transformatio By David Ignatius May 18, 2005 As the United States was struggling with the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, the historian Niall Ferguson published a book arguing that America needed the modern equivalent of the old British Colonial Office to build political stability in far-flung places. The U.S. military was good at breaking things, he suggested in Colossus, but not so good at putting them back together. Nobody in the Bush administration would endorse the neo-imperial language of Ferguson's argument. But behind the scenes, the administration is debating a range of major policy changes that would move in that direction -- transforming the military services, the State Department and other agencies in ways that would help the United States do better what it botched so badly in Iraq. Don't call it the Colonial Office, but in many ways, that's a model for the kind of far-flung stabilization force that officials are discussing. The driver for these changes, as with so much else in Washington, is the administration's equivalent of the Energizer Bunny, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The debate is mostly taking place out of view among a small group of defense and foreign policy experts. But it involves issues that are crucial for the future of the country. So here's a primer, based on unclassified reports that are mostly available on the Internet. The most creative analysis is a study that Rumsfeld requested last year from the elite Defense Science Board. Released in December and titled Transition to and from Hostilities, the study is a blueprint for changes across the government that would give the United States the nation-building capability it has too often lacked in Iraq. The Pentagon study starts with the premise that Afghanistan and Iraq are not isolated problems. Since the end of the Cold War, the study notes, the United States has embarked on stabilization and reconstruction operations every 18 to 24 months. And these are hardly quick-hit deployments; in fact, they typically last five to eight years. The problem is that America has conducted these slow reconstruction efforts with military forces that are trained and equipped for rapid, devastating assault. That mismatch is at the heart of U.S. problems in Iraq. The first recommendation by the Defense Science Board was that the military apply its genius for logistics and management to peacemaking as well as war-fighting. The study urged a new contingency planning process to identify countries where U.S. intervention might be necessary -- and to make sure U.S. forces have the necessary language skills, area knowledge and civil affairs expertise. Again, these were precisely the reconstruction tools U.S. forces lacked as they raced to Baghdad in March 2003. The study noted pointedly that in 2004 the Defense Department had 6,723 French speakers, 6,931 German speakers, 4,194 Russian speakers -- and only 2,864 Arabic speakers. In a recommendation that surely gave heartburn to Army generals who hold tight to their traditional war-fighting mission, the study stressed: Stabilization and reconstruction missions must become a core competency of both the Departments of Defense and State. The military services need to reshape and rebalance their forces to provide a stabilization and reconstruction capability. The Defense Science Board study tracks arguments made by the most influential defense intellectual writing these days, Thomas P.M. Barnett. He argued last year in The Pentagon's New Map that the U.S. military should be divided into two forces that reflect its differing missions: a Leviathan force, centered around the Air Force and Navy, that could apply overwhelming power quickly anywhere in the world; and what he called a System Administrator force, based in the Army and Marines, that could win the decisive battle to stabilize and rebuild nations in the aftermath of conflict. These radical post-Iraq ideas are beginning to take root. At the State Department, there's a new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization under director Carlos Pascual. It has just 40 people at this stage, but it's beginning to coordinate activities of the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and the Agency for International Development, so that the chaotic mismanagement of the initial Iraq reconstruction effort isn't repeated. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden have joined to sponsor a bill that would put many of the recommendations
Saddam refused to deport Zarqawi, UPI, Iraq News Note
This item comes from the list of Bruce Tefft, a retired CIA officer, prefaced with the following remark: Funny, I thought Saddam Hussein had no contact with terrorists - nor were any terrorists in Iraq prior to the US "invasion" Jordan king:Iraq refused to deport Zarqawi BEIRUT, Lebanon, May 19 (UPI) -- Jordan's King Abdullah revealed Thursday that Iraq's former Baath regime had refused to deport Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, blamed for ongoing terrorism in Iraq. Speaking in an interview with Saudi daily al-Hayat, Abdullah said Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is well entrenched in Iraq and that "he and terrorists like him thrive in such places where security and stability are non-existent." Abdullah said Jordan was the first target for Zarqawi before he found safe haven in Iraq. "Since Zarqawi entered Iraq before the fall of the former regime we have been trying to have him deported back to Jordan for trial, but our efforts were in vain," Abdullah added. Zarqawi, the purported leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, is accused of terrorist bombings targeting U.S.-led multinational troops and Iraqi forces as well as civilians. Abdullah also pointed out that "real reforms are forthcoming in all countries of the Middle East," stressing, however, that "true change should come from within and not be imposed from outside." Copyright 2005 by United Press International.All rights reserved. http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/0519aaa06dbf.upiSys=rmmillerFid=WORLDNEWType=NewsFilter=World%20News
Hoagland, Subtle Shift in Goals
Washington Post A Subtle Shift in GoalsBy Jim HoaglandThursday, June 30, 2005 President Bush shifted to a more realistic vision of what he can achieve in Iraq in deft and deniable fashion in his address to the nation Tuesday night. As Bush's changing of gears -- but not of direction -- is more widely understood, it is likely to reassure Americans and deeply trouble Iraqi democrats. The new emphasis on leaving behind a workable Iraq rather than staying until that Arab nation has become a model of democracy for the entire region was captured in the president's pledge to "prevent al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban -- a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends." That is a relatively modest goal compared with the lofty ambition to put freedom on the march that Bush has laid out in the past. He is not renouncing such ambitions -- indeed, he should not -- but he did begin speaking to the American public more realistically about applying them in Iraq in his speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. But that is only part of the effort the administration needs to make. The president also needs to speak more frequently and honestly to his real allies in Iraq, who will have some uncomfortable but valuable things to tell him if they believe he is listening. One of the greatest handicaps the administration still confronts is a self-imposed refusal to listen to Iraqis about doing things the Iraqi way. From trying to build a new Iraqi army on U.S. specifications and prejudices to preferring to contract with foreigners rather than employ Iraqis, U.S. officials have often made the perfect the enemy of the good. Iraqi concern on that score could be exacerbated by the president's heavy emphasis Tuesday on fighting terrorists in Iraq so that Americans don't have to fight them on U.S. soil. That may help steady public support here -- no American can argue with that aim -- but it is a shifting of the goal posts from liberating Iraq from tyranny. Bush should have done more Tuesday to show that his anti-terrorism objectives are compatible with Iraqi needs. The care that needs to be exercised to keep American and Iraqi support for Bush's Iraq policies in sync is underlined by the reports of contacts between representatives of guerrilla groups and U.S. military officers and diplomats. Such contacts are not new. They parallel similar efforts by Iraqi authorities. But the reports come at a delicate time for the interim Iraqi administration that emerged from the Jan. 30 elections. Iraqi authorities are struggling to take on greater authority and responsibility in security matters. That effort both permits and requires a new sophistication by Washington in dealing with friends and foes in Iraq, and knowing the difference. Efforts by Ayad Allawi to cut deals with his former Baathist associates for a possible return to authoritarian rule in Iraq -- criticized at the time in this column -- have given way to the constitution-writing and politically inclusive efforts that are being undertaken today by Iraqis serving under Ibrahim Jafari, who was elected prime minister by a Kurdish-Shiite coalition in April. Allawi, who was promoted by U.S. authorities to be prime minister in May 2004, loved power as much as President Bush loved Allawi's tough-guy swagger and his praise of Bush's leadership. Allawi visited Washington last September wearing a bandage on his right hand, which he said he had injured by pounding a conference table to make a point. Baghdad lore attributed the injury to Allawi's striking an aide in a fit of anger. It is hard to imagine Jafari, who paid his first visit to Washington last week, ever pounding a table, an aide or anything else. He is more a will-o'-the-wisp, seeming to fade away before your eyes as he spins out elegant but noncommittal statements to deflect almost any problem or challenge you raise. But he was welcomed to the White House very much as Allawi had been -- more as a symbol than as a leader able and willing to push for the course corrections that are urgently needed on the training and equipping of Iraqi forces. U.S. officials in Iraq still resist briefing Iraqi civilian leaders on active military operations, and in some cases they resist turning over real sovereignty and responsibility to the Iraqis. Talk to Sunni rebel forces? By all means, as long as the subject is Sunni acceptance of a new constitutional order in which they participate but do not dominate. The new constitution should be a de facto political version of the consequential surrenders that did not occur on the battlefields in 1991 or 2003 -- fundamental errors that are still to be corrected. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Gerecht, Squandered Victory Losing Iraq, NYT Book Review
July 10, 2005 'Squandered Victory' and 'Losing Iraq': Now What? By REUEL MARC GERECHT COULD the administration have chosen a different course in Iraq that would today have the country farther down the road to popular government and cost fewer lives? Two new books -- among the first ''insider'' accounts by former Iraq advisers -- find the White House guilty of an incompetent occupation. Representative government may, just possibly, still take hold in Mesopotamia, but neither Larry Diamond, a researcher at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who was called by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to temporary service in Baghdad in early 2004, nor David L. Phillips, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as an adviser to the State Department before and after the fall of Saddam Hussein, are at all optimistic. Though thematically similar, Diamond's ''Squandered Victory'' and Phillips's ''Losing Iraq'' are distinctly different books. The former is essentially a memoir of three months in Iraq: January through March 2004, the period when Diamond served in the Coalition Provisional Authority, the occupation brain center run by L. Paul Bremer III and the American military. Phillips's book is a recollection of a year's work on the Future of Iraq Project, the State Department's much-praised but little-used prewar planning document. ''Squandered Victory'' is a serious volume; ''Losing Iraq'' is not. Two months after Rice summoned him to public service, Diamond arrives in Baghdad. He doesn't really have a firm idea of what he will do -- a common fate at the C.P.A., especially among American civilians on temporary duty. A scholar who made his reputation writing about young democracies, Diamond is annoyed by the ad hoc nature of occupation decision making; he is also often deeply impressed by the commitment, and sometimes even the planning, of the Americans and Iraqis he works with. He finds the C.P.A.'s plan for building democracy in Iraq ''conceptually impressive and exciting,'' and throws himself into his job, which more or less develops into giving tutorials to Iraqis and serving as a scholar-in-residence for Americans. The two roles come together as Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law -- the interim constitution -- is being written and rewritten by Iraqi drafters and their alternately intrusive and reticent American proctors. After the signing of the constitution on March 8, 2004, Diamond started ''to sell it'' to Iraqi audiences who ''wanted very much to learn about the document and discuss it -- not simply to accept it and praise it but to dissect it, question it, debate it and curse it.'' Diamond becomes a sounding board for Iraqi opinion among the increasingly isolated and very young Americans who dominate the C.P.A. Although he has minimal knowledge of Iraq, doesn't speak Arabic and is reluctant to travel outside the American compound in Baghdad without substantial security, he tries to convey local sentiments and the weaknesses of American policy to his inner-circle colleagues (who appear to travel even less than he does). Conscious of his own limitations, Diamond generously shares the limelight. He underscores, in particular, the prodigious pro-democracy efforts of Michael Gfoeller, a scholarly but streetwise Arabic-speaking foreign service officer who almost single-handedly runs the American show in the critical Shiite lands south of Baghdad, reaching out to Shiite tribal sheiks, clerics and local notables. Gfoeller is one of the real heroes of the American occupation, and Diamond's awe of his talents and accomplishments speaks well of his own fair-mindedness toward his compatriots in Iraq. Unfortunately, the character sketches in ''Squandered Victory'' usually aren't strong. Iraqis and Americans come and go, and some keep reappearing, but Diamond rarely gives you a strong sense of who these people really are. Quoting a colleague, he touches upon a problem for the occupation: ''The core of the process in Iraq is democratization. But the people at Usaid and in local governance just didn't sufficiently buy into this. There was no strong consensus on democracy building.'' Diamond drops this bombshell without once providing any detail on colleagues who hadn't bought in. His reticence about probing their doubts, hopes and frustrations makes the book feel at times like a characterless white paper for a Washington think tank. Even more regrettable is Diamond's failure to supply insightful commentary on the major Iraqi players. His discussion of Ahmad Chalabi, the notorious head of the Iraqi National Congress, is especially weak. Even if Chalabi is ''voraciously ambitious'' and a ''darling of American neoconservatives,'' we aren't helped to understand the events and historical forces that elevated him to his leadership position among the Iraqi exiles, or why, despite the best efforts of the
Feith on Iraq War, WaPo
Washington Post Pentagon Official Admits Iraq Errors By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer July 13, 2005 Douglas J. Feith, a top Pentagon official who was deeply involved in planning the Iraq war, said there were significant missteps in the administration's strategy, including the delayed transfer of power to a new Iraqi government, and said he did not know whether the invading U.S. force was the right size. In an interview as he concludes his tenure as undersecretary of defense for policy, Feith acknowledged that there were trade-offs and pros and cons to the Pentagon's plan to use a relatively small invasion force in Iraq, voicing uncertainty about whether that decision was correct. The war's rolling start with a streamlined ground force achieved some tactical surprise, he said, potentially averting a longer war and other catastrophes such as destruction of Iraqi oil fields. But he acknowledged that a small force had drawbacks, and others have criticized the plan for failing to stop widespread looting and insecurity after the Saddam Hussein's government fell in April 2003. I am not asserting to you that I know that the answer is, we did it right. What I am saying is it's an extremely complex judgment to know whether the course that we chose with its pros and cons was more sensible, Feith said in a 90-minute interview Monday evening at his Bethesda home. Feith's resignation was announced in January. His comments are a rare public sign of doubt about Iraqi policy by a Pentagon official. He said mistaken actions and policies in Iraq resulted in frequent course corrections, pointing to two that he considered significant -- both resulting from an early failure to put Iraqis in charge. First, the United States missed the opportunity before the war to train enough Kurds and other Iraqi exiles to assist the U.S. military, he said. That didn't happen in the numbers we had hoped, he said. A plan to train an estimated 5,000 Iraqi exiles in Hungary produced instead only a few hundred, in part because U.S. military leaders at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, were uncomfortable with it. Training Iraqi forces has since emerged as the central thrust of the U.S. exit strategy for Iraq. Even more important, Feith said, was the reluctance among some U.S. officials to transfer power early on to an Iraqi government and dismantle the U.S. occupation authority, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer. How would Iraq have been different if we had terminated the CPA in May or June of 'o3? and created an Iraqi government, he asked. Some people said if you do that and it fails, you'll set the country back irretrievably and . . . the only way you could set up a government early on would be to rely unduly on the 'externals,' he said, referring to Iraqi exiles. My views were generally in favor of transferring responsibility to the Iraqis earlier. I thought there were ways of getting the 'internals' involved earlier, he said, speaking of prospective Iraqi leaders inside the country who were not well known to the United States before the invasion. On troop levels in Iraq, Feith said U.S. military commanders -- not the Pentagon -- determined the flow of and number of forces into the country. I don't believe there was a single case where the commander asked for forces and didn't get them . . . the commander controlled the forces in the theater, he said. Senior U.S. Army officers dispute this view, saying the Pentagon cut off the planned influx of nine division-equivalents into Iraq in the war's initial phase. Feith acknowledged it is difficult to strike the right balance between having too few troops to provide security and an overly large occupation force, which he said risked increasing antagonism, increasing friction, increasing the number of soldiers we had sitting around waiting for intelligence that we didn't have. Ultimately, people are going to be able to go back and make judgments week by week about whether troop levels were adequate, he said. He declined to comment on a possible timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
Corruption in Allawi Govt, Knight Ridder
Knight Ridder Washington Bureau July 15, 2005 Web of Corruption Found in Iraq's Military Contracts By Hannah Allam BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The Iraqi Defense Ministry has squandered more than $ 300 million buying faulty and outdated military equipment in what appears to be a massive web of corruption that flourished under American-appointed supervisors for a year or longer, U.S. and Iraqi military officials said this week. Vendors are suspected of vastly overcharging for substandard equipment, including helicopters, machine guns and armored vehicles, and kicking back money to Iraqi Defense Ministry buyers. The defective equipment has jeopardized the lives of Iraq's embattled security forces and exposed a startling lack of oversight for one of the country's most crucial rebuilding projects. Officials of Iraq's recently elected government have fired the main suspects in the scandal, and several former defense overseers are under investigation for possible criminal charges, Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi said in an interview this week. I view corruption as an incubator for terrorism, said al-Duleimi, who took office in May and isn't implicated in the scandal. If you can't defend against corruption, you can't defend against terrorism. The suspected fraud slowed progress in training and equipping Iraqi forces, whose performance against deadly insurgents is the key gauge for when the U.S. military can begin withdrawing its 135,000 troops from Iraq. Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus is the senior U.S. officer in charge of training and equipping Iraqi forces. He declined to comment on the allegations, saying it was a matter for the sovereign government of Iraq to resolve. Al-Duleimi said investigators are looking at more than 40 questionable contracts that allegedly sent a huge chunk of the ministry's annual budget into the pockets of senior Iraqi defense officials and their foreign business partners. Other Iraqis familiar with the cases said there may be more fraudulent contracts involving many more millions of dollars. Investigators are looking at purchases dating back to the June 28, 2004, transfer of sovereignty from American administrator L. Paul Bremer III to the caretaker government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Many Iraqi administrators hired under Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority kept their jobs after the handover of the ministry, but after that the U.S. military no longer had the final say in awarding contracts. However, Americans still ran the show behind the scenes, said several Iraqi bureaucrats involved with the ministry at the time. It's implausible to them that U.S. officials, who held daily briefings with Iraqi defense chiefs, didn't catch wind of the alleged wrongdoing. It seems hard to understand to an outsider that this stuff could go on under our noses and Americans wouldn't know anything about it. But, clearly, we didn't know everything, said a U.S. military official familiar with the events. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss an open investigation. The official said American advisers had warned the government about some suspicious activity, but they weren't aware of the extent of the problem. In his words: When the $ 300 million figure came out, jaws hit the floor. We had no idea the numbers were that high. The official emphasized that it wasn't U.S. taxpayer funds involved in the alleged corruption, though he added that commanders have had to dip into American money to correct the losses and keep Iraqi training on track. He said it was hard to rein in Iraqi officials who had grown accustomed to having cash thrown at them in the confusing first months of the war, but added that there was no other way to get things done when there was no banking system and concerns were mounting over security. Maybe you heard a rumor that a certain guy's a crook, but you still needed equipment for the Iraqis and he could get them by the end of the month. What do you do? the official asked. We are not operating in a black-and-white situation here. This is a gray, gray world we work in. In one case, a team of Iraqi defense inspectors traveled to Poland to check on what they understood to be a fleet of refurbished transport helicopters that cost the government more than $ 100 million. What the inspectors found were 24 Soviet-era helicopters, each about 30 years old and way past its prime. Disgusted, the Iraqi team refused the aircraft and returned toBaghdad empty-handed, with neither helicopters nor the money paid up front for them. You could say the helicopters were out of order, al-Duleimi said. Other disastrous purchases include a shipment of sleek MP5 machine guns, costing about $ 3,500 apiece, that are now believed to be Egyptian-made knockoffs worth $200 each on the street, according to American and Iraqi officials familiar with the contracts under scrutiny. In another case, defense officials bought expensive armored personnel
Sistani warns of 'Genocidal War,' Independent
Independent Iraq's top Shia cleric warns of 'genocidal war' By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad Published: 19 July 2005 The slaughter of hundreds of civilians by suicide bombers shows that a genocidal war is threatening Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shia cleric, warned yesterday. So far he has persuaded most of his followers not to respond in kind against the Sunni, from whom the bombers are drawn, despite repeated massacres of Shia. But sectarian divisions between Shia and Sunni are deepening across Iraq after the killing of 18 children in the district of New Baghdad last week and the death of 98 people caught by the explosion of a gas tanker in the market town of Musayyib. Many who died were visiting a Shia mosque. There are also calls for the formation of militias to protect Baghdad neighbourhoods. Khudayr al-Khuzai, a Shia member of parliament, said the time had come to bring back popular militias. He added: The plans of the interior and the defence ministries to impose security in Iraq have failed to stop the terrorists. Against the wishes of the Grand Ayatollah, who has counselled restraint, some Shia have started retaliatory killings of members of the former regime, most of whom but not all are Sunni. Some carrying out the attacks appear to belong to the 12,000-strong paramilitary police commandos. Mystery surrounds many killings. A former general in Saddam Hussein's army called Akram Ahmed Rasul al-Bayati and his two sons, Ali, a policeman, and Omar were arrested by police commandos 10 days ago. Omar was released and one of his uncles paid $7,000 for the release of the other two. But when he went to get them he saw them taken out of a car and shot dead. Fear of Shia death squads, perhaps secretly controlled by the Badr Brigade, the leading Shia militia, frightens the Sunni. The patience of the Shia is wearing very thin. But their leaders want them to consolidate their strength within the government after their election victory in January. The radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia twice fought US troops, has called for restraint. The occupation itself is the problem, he said. Iraq not being independent is the problem. And the other problems stem from that - from sectarianism to civil war. The entire American presence causes this. The suicide bombings show increasing sophistication. The casualty figures from Musayyib were so horrific because the bomber blew himself up beside a fuel tanker which had been stolen two days earlier and pre-positioned in the centre of the town. The slaughter of hundreds of civilians by suicide bombers shows that a genocidal war is threatening Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shia cleric, warned yesterday. So far he has persuaded most of his followers not to respond in kind against the Sunni, from whom the bombers are drawn, despite repeated massacres of Shia. But sectarian divisions between Shia and Sunni are deepening across Iraq after the killing of 18 children in the district of New Baghdad last week and the death of 98 people caught by the explosion of a gas tanker in the market town of Musayyib. Many who died were visiting a Shia mosque. There are also calls for the formation of militias to protect Baghdad neighbourhoods. Khudayr al-Khuzai, a Shia member of parliament, said the time had come to bring back popular militias. He added: The plans of the interior and the defence ministries to impose security in Iraq have failed to stop the terrorists. Against the wishes of the Grand Ayatollah, who has counselled restraint, some Shia have started retaliatory killings of members of the former regime, most of whom but not all are Sunni. Some carrying out the attacks appear to belong to the 12,000-strong paramilitary police commandos. Mystery surrounds many killings. A former general in Saddam Hussein's army called Akram Ahmed Rasul al-Bayati and his two sons, Ali, a policeman, and Omar were arrested by police commandos 10 days ago. Omar was released and one of his uncles paid $7,000 for the release of the other two. But when he went to get them he saw them taken out of a car and shot dead. Fear of Shia death squads, perhaps secretly controlled by the Badr Brigade, the leading Shia militia, frightens the Sunni. The patience of the Shia is wearing very thin. But their leaders want them to consolidate their strength within the government after their election victory in January. The radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia twice fought US troops, has called for restraint. The occupation itself is the problem, he said. Iraq not being independent is the problem. And the other problems stem from that - from sectarianism to civil war. The entire American presence causes this. The suicide bombings show increasing sophistication. The casualty figures from Musayyib were so horrific because the bomber blew himself up beside a fuel tanker which had been stolen
Jim Hoagland, Bush's Risky Intervention
washingtonpost.com Bush's Risky Intervention By Jim HoaglandAugust 28, 2005 PARIS -- While President Bush was telephoning an influential Shiite leader to lobby for changes in the new constitution being written in Baghdad last week, Iraq's terrorist forces were busy targeting electric power lines in the countryside. Their priorities of destruction reveal how the terrorists intend to win the war they wage -- and how they can be countered. Bush called Abdul Aziz Hakim early Thursday, Iraq time, to express concern about three issues: women's rights, delaying bringing a new federal system into effect and softening rules under which ex-Baathists are excluded from government jobs. These changes, Bush said, would increase the chances of the constitution being accepted by Iraq's Sunni minority. Shiite and Kurdish leaders agreed late Friday to accommodate Bush by amending the draft they had written earlier last week, according to Iraqi sources in Baghdad. Most important, the Shiites and Kurds agreed that they would let the parliament that will be elected in December decide on the laws determining the scope of autonomy to be given to Shiite and Kurdish regions under a decentralized federal government, just as Bush asked. However successful or well-intentioned, Bush's tardy intervention on behalf of the Sunnis risks emboldening the ex-Baathists and foreign jihadists who stoke the rebellion in the Sunni-inhabited areas of Iraq. Until now, they have shown relatively little interest in constitutions of any kind. But the insurgents have made the sustained targeting of infrastructure a major part of an increasingly sophisticated campaign to destroy public confidence in the Iraqi government. The rebels want to reinstall terrorism as the governing principle of Iraq and prevent free votes on the constitution in mid-October and for a new government in December. Instead of set battles, the insurgents mount terrorist spectaculars -- coordinated bombings and attacks on civilians -- and have moved from hitting "random targets of opportunity to sophisticated planning with strategic and tactical objectives against specific high-value targets," according to a recent analysis by a private security firm in Iraq. The attacks are aimed at spreading fear and anger in the population, beginning with the Sunnis. Defeating these tactics will require more U.S. help for Iraqis in protecting critical infrastructure and less U.S. pressure on Hakim and others to grant Sunni leaders aligned with the insurgents an effective veto over the constitution -- which only increases the intimidation effect. Repeatedly over the past 18 months, big chunks of U.S. aid -- at least $3.4 billion, according to one report -- intended for repairing or building Iraqi infrastructure were shifted into increased spending on Iraqi forces, military equipment and other direct "security" needs. A $70 million fund to clean up polluted rivers around Basra was shifted, for example, to strengthen administration at the then corruption-drenched Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. "We have been able to increase production of electricity, but we can't get the increases to consumers because of sabotage," Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi told me by telephone from Baghdad last week. "The power grid is now a primary target for the Baathists." The crippling psychological effect of this reverse "hearts and minds" campaign by the terrorists was illustrated last week by an attack on electric lines that prevented water from being pumped into Baghdad -- just as the politicians reached preliminary agreement on a constitution devoted to high-minded principles of freedom and democracy. Chalabi -- the target a year ago of accusations of treason and chicanery leveled in the press by anonymous U.S. officials whom he had apparently antagonized -- has survived that smear campaign and emerged as a key policymaker in Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's government. Chalabi today works smoothly with U.S. commanders on his primary portfolio: infrastructure protection. Changes in security on Iraq's pipelines helped increase oil exports from 1.4 million to 1.6 million barrels a day in July, Chalabi said. With U.S. help, the government was able to deploy regular Iraqi army units to replace or oversee tribal guards, who had a vested interest in making the pipelines leaky and unsafe enough for their U.S.-provided salaries to continue. Chalabi landed in hot water with the American overseers of occupation in part because of his abrasive insistence that they did not understand Iraqi culture and priorities well enough to make those kinds of distinctions -- and refused to listen to Iraqis who did. He declined to discuss the constitution when we spoke on Wednesday, and went out of his way to praise U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for his low-key support for the drafting process. But Chalabi's original point -- that Iraqis are ready
Syria a Terrorist Hub for Iraq, AP, Iraq News Note
NB: The current US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has an unusuallygood understanding of the country.Notably,he alludes to Syrian training of the jihadis who go to Iraq, or at least Syrian facilitation of their training. That goes rather against the grain of the current fashion in terrorism analysis, where the focus is on what people believe, and the claim is made that the necessary knowledge can come from pretty much anywhere, including the internet. The FAS had a most compelling riposte to a recent Washington Post story that made that argument: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2005/08/080805.html Associated PressSeptember 12, 2005U.S. Envoy: Syria a Terrorist Hub for Iraq By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer The Bush administration's top diplomat in Iraq said Syria has become a hub for terrorists who want to stop democratic progress in Iraq and that U.S. "patience is running out," but he refused to specify what consequences Damascus might face.Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's tough talk on Syria is part of a U.S. pressure campaign in many foreign capitals and at the United Nations gathering this week in New York. "Our patience is running out, the patience of Iraqis are running out. The time for decision ... has arrived for Damascus," Khalilzad said. Speaking to reporters at the State Department, Khalilzad refused to rule out either a military strike on Syria or an attempt to further punish Syria through the United Nations Security Council. "All options are on the table," Khalilzad said. The United States claims the Baathist regime in Syria allows a free flow of foreign terrorists across its border with Iraq and turns a blind eye to terrorist training camps on its soil. Khalilzad said young, would-be terrorists are flying openly to Syria, landing unmolested at the Damascus airport on one-way tickets. "It simply is not tolerable that they, with impunity, can allow terrorists to come from other countries in the region, get training or pass through," to next-door Iraq, Khalilzad said. Khalilzad is in Washington to accompany Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as he visits the White House and meets with members of Congress. Khalilzad offered no proof of claims of Syrian interference, which he called "blatant," and gave no specifics about U.S. options to counter Syria.
Angelo Codevilla, Spinning Away Iraq and 9/11, Iraq News Note
NB: Among many points, Codevilla takes issue with the claim made recently by the National Geographic (and many others) that the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, entered the U.S.on a forged Iraqi passport. Codevilla says the passport is legitimate, and he is absolutely correct. The most authoritative statement regarding that passport appears in 9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, p. 62.Tucked awayin footnote 17, it states: "An examination of Yousef's passport by the Forensic Document Lab at INS later reveals that the date of birth has been overwritten and the passport binding has been cut and un-stitched, but no other alterations were detected." The passportwas issued in Baghdad; contains a Pakistani visa issued in Baghdad; and shows stamps for one journey,in whichYousef left Iraq for Jordan in May 1992. He stayedin Jordana week, before flying on to Pakistan. Yousef then used another passport (clearly not hisown)todepart Pakistan for New York. Before arrivingin New York,Yousef ditched that passport and at U.S. customs presented his Iraqi passport, asking for political asylum and gaining admission into thecountry(this passport is a public document, Government Exhibit 614, first introduced into the court records in the trial of Mohammed Salameh et al). And, then,as Codevilla notes, there is the peculiar point that Yousef is the "nephew" of the 9/11 mastermind. Khalid Shaykh Mohammed, while another "nephew" was KSM's critical right-hand man (other members of this remarkable terrorist clan include two older "brothers" of Ramzi Yousef, arrested in Pakistan in 2004). These peopledid not lead particularly Islamic lives, and they were engaged in major acts of terrorism, before they ever met Usama bin Ladin, as Codevilla rightly notes. The Claremont InstituteThis is the print version of http://www.claremont.org/writings/050912codevilla.html. National Geographic Spins 9/11 By Angelo M. CodevillaPosted September 12, 2005 National Geographic's recent special on 9/11 reflected the CIA's spin on the world. It was filled with conjecture based on bad sources, and a few outright falsehoods. As is the case with so many CIA products, it avoided the distinction between what we know and what the U.S. government wants to believe. In doing so, it gave the impression that we know things that we do not. Here are a few illustrations. The program claims that in the 1980s, Peshawar was swarming with CIA agents. In fact, there were exactly zero in direct contact with the Mujahideen there (or anywhere else). The Islamabad CIA station had one-and-a-half full-time staff working on Afghanistan, and did so exclusively through Pakistan's security service, the ISI. This was agency policy. The first introductions between CIA officers and the Mujahideen were not even made until October 1984. The program quoted the CIA line that Osama bin Laden escaped to Pakistan. Not only is there no evidence for this, but there is no evidence of bin Laden's continued existence after November 2001. This, after the world's most thorough manhunt. The several bin Laden tapes have never been credible, and no reputable person claims to have seen him. National Geographic gave the impression that bin Laden was the focal point, the deus ex machina, of anti--U.S. terrorism. This is the CIA's view, rooted in an eagerness to exonerate Third Word governments from responsibility for terrorism. The CIA would have us believe that private entities like al-Qaeda manipulate vast state intelligence servicesnot the other way around. Not surprisingly, the CIA draws evidence for this view from the intelligence services of states like Syria, Egypt, and yes, until 2003, Iraq. These state agencies dish up intelligence from terrorists outfits because they have infiltrated every one. They manipulate the groups against other state rivals and against us. And yet the CIA still assumes the information is disinterested. The CIA's principal fault in its intelligence collection has always been that its "case officers," who are not actually agents, play at intelligence. Case officers have neither the policies, the skills, nor the courage to undertake real undercover work. And so they take what they are told and call it good. Experience demonstrates that the CIA often thinks it has the upper hand while being taken for a ride by foreign serviceshostiles and "friendlies" alike. When we have actually come upon intelligence windfalls, like Germany's Stasi files, we have discovered that nearly all the CIA's agents were actually were working for the other side. Most recently, the CIA's vaunted ROCKSTARS operation in Iraqon the basis of which part of the April 2003 attack was plannedturns out to have been managed
Massive Corruption in Iyad Allawi's Gov't, Independent
The Independent (London) September 19, 2005, Monday WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO IRAQ'S MISSING $ 1BN?; BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN BAGHDADOne billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.'It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history,' Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.'Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal.' The carefully planned theft has so weakened the army that it cannot hold Baghdad against insurgent attack without American military support, Iraqi officials say, making it difficult for the US to withdraw its 135,000- strong army from Iraq, as Washington says it wishes to do.Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters. The manufacturers said they should have been scrapped after 25 years of service. Armoured cars purchased by Iraq turned out to be so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour. A shipment of the latest MP5 American machine-guns, at a cost of $ 3,500 (£1,900) each, consisted in reality of Egyptian copies worth only $ 200 a gun. Other armoured cars leaked so much oil that they had to be abandoned. A deal was struck to buy 7.62mm machine-gun bullets for 16 cents each, although they should have cost between 4 and 6 cents.Many Iraqi soldiers and police have died because they were not properly equipped. In Baghdad they often ride in civilian pick-up trucks vulnerable to gunfire, rocket- propelled grenades or roadside bombs. For months even men defusing bombs had no protection against blast because they worked without bullet-proof vests. These were often promised but never turned up.The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions.Senior Iraqi officials now say they cannot understand how, if this is so, the disappearance of almost all the military procurement budget could have passed unnoticed by the US military in Baghdad and civilian advisers working in the defence ministry.Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only front men, and 'rogue elements' within the US military or intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.Given that building up an Iraqiarmy to replace American and British troops is a priority for Washington and London, the failure to notice that so much money was being siphoned off at the very least argues a high degree of negligence on the part of US officials and officers in Baghdad.The report of the Board of Supreme Audit on the defence ministry contracts was presented to the office of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, in May. But the extent of the losses has become apparent only gradually. The sum missing was first reported as $ 300m and then $ 500m, but in fact it is at least twice as large. 'If you compare the amount that was allegedly stolen of about $ 1bn compared with the budget of the ministry of defence, it is nearly 100 per cent of the ministry's [procurement] budget that has gone Awol,' said Mr Allawi.The money missing from all ministries under the interim Iraqi government appointed by the US in June 2004 may turn out to be close to $ 2bn. Of a military procurement budget of $ 1.3bn, some $ 200m may have been spent on usable equipment, though this is a charitable view, say officials. As a result the Iraqi army has had to rely on cast-offs from the US military, and even these have been slow in coming.Mr Allawi says a further $ 500m to $ 600m
Entifadh Qanbar, Defending Iraq
Entifadh Qanbar is Iraq's Deputy Military Attache at the Embassy in Washington. He gave this speech to the American Enterprise Institute on Oct 5. Defending IraqBy Entifadh K. QanbarThe biggest danger to Iraqi citizens and the Iraqi government is terrorism. Thus, the main task of the Iraqi army is not to fight wars with foreign countries, but to fight terrorism. To defeat terrorism in Iraq, we need to establish a military force based on a doctrine that recognizes the nature of the enemy and what is required to defeat him. We need to be prepared for a long term war. Therefore, our necessary starting point is to understand the roots of terrorism in Iraq and the terrorists methods and means and how to defeat them.I. WHO IS THE ENEMY?Terrorism is funded, strategically planned, and operationally directed by Baathist organizations in Iraq. They are elements of the former regime, especially the Military Bureau of the Baath Party, the Mukhabarat, the Amn al Khass, Fedayeen Saddam and so on.It has become clear to us that Baathists through their campaign of terror in Sunni areas are attempting to hijack the representation of the Sunnis. It is a big mistake to equate Sunnis with Baathists. Baathists are not equal to Sunnis and Sunnis are not equal to Baathists. If we dont make that distinction, we will fall into the trap of exactly what the Baathists want. Therefore, military campaigns to clean Sunni areas from Baathist and terrorist elements should be proceeded by intensive political and social campaigns and communications to separate the Baathists from the Sunni population. This will help us identify and isolate terrorists, and it will avoid the imposition of a catastrophic collective punishment on the Sunnis. We must work very hard and be very truthful with ourselves not to allow a repeat of another cycle of oppression, this time directed against Sunnis. Local commanders of the Iraqi army, security forces, and police must abide by the rules of law, and we must not confuse our desire to aggressively fight and kill terrorists with punishing an entire population of Sunnis. Baathist terrorists are counting on this issue to create an environment in which Sunnis feel they are oppressed, fueling prospects for civil war in Iraq. Another important matter in defeating terrorism is to give every Iraqi a stake in the country. Baathists played the fear factor on the Sunnis, by spreading the idea that the Shia and the Kurds in federal Iraq will take control of oil in their own areas, while leaving the Sunnis in oil-poor areas without a share of this national wealth. We were able to successfully add a clause to the draft constitution stipulating that oil wealth is to be equally shared by all Iraqis. Article (109): Oil and gas is the property of all the Iraqi people in all the regions and governorates. We are determined to work very hard to legislate equal ownership for all Iraqis, which will be an important way to! give the Sunnis a stake in the future of Iraq.We also have begun a policy of constant and relentless outreach to Sunnis who live specifically in areas where there is extreme tension. We had a success story in Tel Afar in which terrorists made a considerable effort to split the city into two warring sectarian factions, but they failed. Both factions were blaming each other and there was a great deal of confusion. We mediated a peace agreement between the two sides and made both sides sit together. It became clear to both sides and to us that a few elements of terrorists had created this confusion and dangerous friction. After the agreement was reached, both side! s took the responsibility to publicly announce the agreement and abide by it and isolate the terrorists This was followed by a fast plan to restore services and provide rations to the city. A military operation followed, which was greatly facilitated by the earlier negotiations and agreement. Consequently, we were able to minimize the collateral damage and civilian casualties. It is also important to note that not all Baathists are working with terrorists or are terrorists. Some Baathists have accepted the new realities. But terrorism in Iraq, I repeat, is led by a Baathist organization of those who do not want to accept power sharing and who still believe that they can stop the democratic process and monopolize power over Iraq.Islamists, including Zarqawis people, and criminal elements of the Iraqi society, all function under the umbrella of the Baathist-terrorist organization. Syria also plays an important role, training insurgents and facilitating their entry into Iraq through direct coordination with the Baathist terror organizations, with Baathist operatives crossing between Syria and Iraq to direct terror operations, such as in Qaim, Mosul, and other places. One high-ranking Baathist who was captured was wearing the new trendy, Baathist look, which is Wahhabi, with a short
Entifadh Qanbar on C-Span, Sunday AM
Entifadh Qanbar, Iraq's Deputy Military Attache, will appear onC-Span's, The Washington Journal,Sunday, October9, from 8:45 to 9:30 AM EDT. C-Span describes the program:"The guest talks about the completed Constitution that is set for a referendum vote October 15, including what the Constitution offers Sunni, Shias, and Kurds and what happens if it is rejected. He was involved in the process of drafting the Constitution."
5 Ministers in Allawi Gov't Indicted!, London Times, Iraq News Note
NB:Wa Po columnist Jim Hoagland writes today, "The president called for 'democratic federalism' in Iraq -- even as his White House staff and intelligence agency maneuver to bring to power Ayad Allawi, who has told visiting American politicians, diplomats and others that decentralized federalism will not work in Iraq." A reader asks why have things gone wrong in Iraq. This is surely one part of the answer. Allawi has been the Iraqi most favored by US and British intelligence for over a decade. The Times October 08, 2005Ministers in dock over missing billionsBy James HiderIraqi officials are aghast at British and US failure to halt corruption in the interim government FIVE former Iraqi ministers who held posts in the interim Government installed by the United States last year are facing charges of corruption and abuse of power, a senior Iraqi judge said yesterday. Among them is Hazem Shaalan, the former Defence Minister in the Government of Iyad Allawi, according to Judge Radhi al-Radhi, head of the Commission on Public Integrity. Under Mr Shaalans leadership, an estimated £1.3 billion went missing, auditors believe. Judge Radhi told The Times that Iraqs fight against terrorists and insurgents had been severely handicapped by the corruption and incompetence of the interim Government, which was selected by the US-led occupation authority to accept the transfer of sovereignty in June last year. The other former Cabinet ministers under indictment are those for Trade, Labour, Housing and Transport. The former Transport Minister has since disappeared and Interpol has issued a warrant for his arrest. In one catastrophic deal, the Iraqi Ministry of Defence paid $226 million (£128 million) for a consignment of Russian helicopters, a deal arranged by a Polish-Iraqi ministry employee, Judge al-Radhi said. Two helicopters were sent in a shabby condition, so we asked them to stop the contract, but we never got the money back. Another $150 million was paid for weapons systems and ammunition for the helicopters. When it appeared that the entire deal was going to fall through, the Iraqis, who had secured no guarantees on their purchase, were told that they could obtain other weapons with their credit. However, they were then told that the equipment would not be available for another four years. Investigating judges have prepared cases against 24 Ministry of Defence employees, including the former Defence Minister, who was close to the US-led authorities after the Anglo-American invasion. A spokesman for Mr Shaalan admitted that corruption was rife in the ministry but denied that the minister had been involved. Judge al-Radhi, whose commission was set up last July, said: If we had 60 or 70 helicopters, at least we could guard the borders. If we had decent weapons and munitions this would shorten the fight against terrorism. Thats why the Defence Ministry case is so important for us. In some ways, the judge conceded, abuse was to be expected, given that the new administration had a lack of experience, that Iraq had been ruled since the war by short-lived governments with little accountability, and that vast sums of money had been pumped into what was an impoverished country. But what exasperated him most was that the ministries in particular the Defence Ministry were under the tutelage of
Warren Marik, The Sepoy Mutiny Syndromw
Warren Marik is a retired CIA officer who is currently in Afghanistan observing the recent elections. He sent these observations to the list. The Sepoy Mutiny Syndrome An excellent film from India recently opened in the United StatesMangal Pandeyabout the beginning of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, when the Army of Bengal revolted against the command and rule of the British East India Company. The East India Company had recruited, trained, and paid native troops of the Army of Bengal to conduct operations against other Indian rulers and states and to maintain order. The revolt of the sepoys resulted in the killing of thousands of British soldiers, civilians, and Indians who remained loyalby the native soldiers upon whom they had depended. The movie is of interest today because of the strong indications that the U.S. military is working under a burden of fear that Iraq and Afghanistan could present the U.S. military with similar mutinies. This fear of betrayal is hindering the U.S. military from accomplishing one of its most important missions: establishing professional military and paramilitary forces that can successfully protect the nascent democracies of these two nations. This fear is, in part, the cause for the lessening confidence that both U.S. taxpayers and Iraqi and Afghan citizens have in the U.S. militarys ability to accomplish its mission. The more disturbing example is the condition of the Iraqi National Army (INA). The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has put the Iraqi military through three iterations during the two and a half years since the U.S. invasion: the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), the Iraqi National Guard (ING), and now the INA. The short histories of all three have been problematic. The U.S. military and the DOD have been, at best, ambivalent about creating quickly an Iraqi military force that could be considered to be effective against adversaries. Recruiting centers have not been adequately protected, and recruits not thoroughly vetted. Military living conditions have been below minimum standards. Training courses were neither intensive nor extensive. ICDC, ING, andfinallyINA units have always been undergunned. When privately asked recently about artillery for the INA, a senior Iraqi government official replied that the INA has no artillery and the Americans would be unlikely to provide artillery. It is an accepted fact that the former Ayad Allawi government, supposedly under the watch of U.S. advisers, stole millions of dollars and provided the INA with useless military equipment. The recent reappraisal of the effectiveness of Iraqi battalions, after two years of training, is an embarrassment to the United States, not just to the Bush administration. A retired British Army colonel recently said that Iraq is a right rollicking cock-up. In Afghanistan, things are not much better. In spite of the extra year the Bush administration has had to train a professional military in Afghanistan, only one support unit of the Afghan National Army (ANA), a battalion of the 201st Corps in Kabul, is now beginning to receive artillery training. ANA military installations remain vulnerable to suicide attacks. In late September a suicide bomber, a relatively new threat in Afghanistan, was able to penetrate perimeter security of a post very close to Kabul and kill ANA soldiers within own their compound. The Afghan paramilitary has been characterized by observers as more or less a hollow force, and it is estimated that a the paramilitary wont be fully trained or outfitted until 2009, eight years after the invasion. A soldier in the U.S. infantry is generally considered to be ready for combat after 20 weeks of training. The Bush administration has had approximately 180 weeks in Afghanistan and 120 weeks in Iraq to recruit and train professional military and paramilitary forces drawn from populations that have had extensive experience in war. In spite of Baathi incompetence, mostly Shia infantrymen and tankers held their own against (also Shia) Iranian forces that had, at times, a three-to-one advantage. Afghan mujahidin stalemated the Soviet 40th Field Army. Something more is going on here than just the lack of DOD resources and local backwardness. Anyone who has been to Iraq or Afghanistan and who reads the U.S. militarys INA and ANA training newsletters can be forgiven for suspecting that the constant reshuffling, renaming, and renumbering of INA and ANA units and the incessant lauding of operations that result in, for example, the capture of five rocket grenades smacks of a shell game that is the result of something deepercall it the Sepoy Mutiny Syndrome. The syndrome is based on a real threat. The sepoys did, of course, revolt. Also, more than 1,800 years before that mutiny, Arminiustrained by the Romansled a German revolt that destroyed three Roman legions. During World War II, less than a century after
US-Syrian Clashes, NYT
October 15, 2005 G.I.'s and Syrians in Tense Clashes on Iraqi Border By JAMES RISEN and DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in the Iraq war, according to current and former military and government officials. The firefight, between Army Rangers and Syrian troops along the border with Iraq, was the most serious of the conflicts with President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to American and Syrian officials. It illustrated the dangers facing American troops as Washington tries to apply more political and military pressure on a country that President Bush last week labeled one of the "allies of convenience" with Islamic extremists. He also named Iran. One of Mr. Bush's most senior aides, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that so far American military forces in Iraq had moved right up to the border to cut off the entry of insurgents, but he insisted that they had refrained from going over it. But other officials, who say they got their information in the field or by talking to Special Operations commanders, say that as American efforts to cut off the flow of fighters have intensified, the operations have spilled over the border - sometimes by accident, sometimes by design. Some current and former officials add that the United States military is considering plans to conduct special operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering. The broadening military effort along the border has intensified as the Iraqi constitutional referendum scheduled for Saturday approaches, and as frustration mounts in the Bush administration and among senior American commanders over their inability to prevent foreign radical Islamists from engaging in suicide bombings and other deadly terrorist acts inside Iraq. Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to the Iraq war what Cambodia was in the Vietnam War: a sanctuary for fighters, money and supplies to flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a shadow struggle. Covert military operations are among the most closely held of secrets, and planning for them is extremely delicate politically as well, so none of those who discussed the subject would allow themselves to be identified. They included military officers, civilian officials and people who are otherwise actively involved in military operations or have close ties to Special Operations forces. In the summer firefight, several Syrian soldiers were killed, leading to a protest from the Syrian government to the United States Embassy in Damascus, according to American and Syrian officials. A military official who spoke with some of the Rangers who took part in the incident said they had described it as an intense firefight, although it could not be learned whether there had been any American casualties. Nor could the exact location of the clash, along the porous and poorly marked border, be learned. In a meeting at the White House on Oct. 1, senior aides to Mr. Bush considered a variety of options for further actions against Syria, apparently including special operations along with other methods for putting pressure on Mr. Assad in coming weeks. American officials say Mr. Bush has not yet signed off on a specific strategy and has no current plan to try to oust Mr. Assad, partly for fear of who might take over. The United States is not planning large-scale military operations inside Syria and the president has not authorized any covert action programs to topple the Assad government, several officials said. "There is no finding on Syria," said one senior official, using the term for presidential approval of a covert action program. "We've got our hands full in the neighborhood," added a senior official involved in the discussion. Some other current and former officials suggest that there already have been initial intelligence gathering operations by small clandestine Special Operations units inside Syria. Several senior administration officials said such special operations had not yet been conducted, although they did not dispute the notion that they were under consideration. Whether they have already occurred or are still being planned, the goal of such operations is limited to singling out insurgents passing through Syria and do not appear to amount to an organized effort to punish or topple the Syrian government. According to people who have spoken with Special Operations commanders, teams like the Army's Delta Force are well suited for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering inside Syria. They could identify and disrupt the lines of communications, sanctuaries and gathering points used by foreign Arab fighters and
