View Full Version : Iraq on the Record
Iraq on the Record - The Bush Administration Public Statements on Iraq (http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/)
Nel sito riportato potete trovare tutte le dichiarazioni sull'Iraq e le motivazioni adotte alla sua invasione dal governo americano. Il report dettagliato di tutte le fonti è curato dal Comitato per la Riforma Governativa (http://www.house.gov/reform/min), una speciale commissione parlamentare della Camera dei Rappresentati americana.
Io mi chiedo ancora dove sono quei fantasmagorici laboratori chimici mobili... :D
-kurgan-
18-03-2004, 02:18
per me c'era lavaggio strade e li hanno parcheggiati da un'altra parte :p
Aspetta che prendo nota con la mia macchina da scrivere invisibile :O
Mah quante se ne inventano, con un altro po ce li portano loro i laboratori :D :D
Varsavia, 14:53
Iraq, presidente polacco: su Adm ci hanno ingannato
Il presidente polacco Aleksander Kwasniewski ha detto oggi durante un incontro con i giornalisti che il suo paese è stato "menato per il naso" sull'esistenza delle armi di distruzione di massa in Iraq. Il presidente polacco ha comunque ribadito che "non avrebbe senso" un ritiro delle sue truppe dal paese.
Poi, mi sto chiedendo ancora come mai non abbiano provato a rovesciare Saddam con un colpo di stato, data la loro grande esperienze in questo tipo di attività, come hanno fatto in Iran, ad esempio...
:rolleyes:
Nevermind
18-03-2004, 15:27
Ma la cosa + bella è vedere ora che scia di scaricabarili reciprochi tra i vari capoccia: "Non l'ho detto io l'ha detto pippo.... io no no a me l'aveva detto topolino..... ma io sono innocente a me lo aveva comunicato minni...." :D :D :D :rolleyes:
Saluti.
Originariamente inviato da Nevermind
Ma la cosa + bella è vedere ora che scia di scaricabarili reciprochi tra i vari capoccia: "Non l'ho detto io l'ha detto pippo.... io no no a me l'aveva detto topolino..... ma io sono innocente a me lo aveva comunicato minni...." :D :D :D :rolleyes:
Saluti.
:rotfl: :rotfl:
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/politics/29PANE.html?hp):
President Asked Aide to Explore Iraq Link to 9/11
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: March 29, 2004
WASHINGTON, March 28 — The White House acknowledged Sunday that on the day after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush asked his top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, to find out whether Iraq was involved.
Mr. Bush wanted to know "did Iraq have anything to do with this? Were they complicit in it?" Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, recounted in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes."
Mr. Bush was not trying to intimidate anyone to "produce information," she said. Rather, given the United States' "actively hostile relationship" with Iraq at the time, he was asking Mr. Clarke "a perfectly logical question," Ms. Rice said.
The conversation — which the White House suggested last week had never taken place — centers on perhaps the most volatile charge Mr. Clarke has made public in recent days: that the Bush White House became fixated on Iraq and Saddam Hussein at the expense of focusing on Al Qaeda.
In his new book, "Against All Enemies," Mr. Clarke recounts that the president pulled him and several other aides into the White House Situation Room on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, and instructed them "to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way."
Mr. Clarke was incredulous, he said in the book. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this," he said he responded.
Mr. Bush answered: "I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred," according to Mr. Clarke's account. Mr. Clarke added in later interviews that he felt he was being intimidated to find a link between the attacks and Iraq.
Last week, the White House said it had no record that Mr. Bush had even been in the Situation Room that day and said the president had no recollection of such a conversation. Although administration officials stopped short of denying the account, they used it to cast doubt on Mr. Clarke's credibility as they sought to debunk the charge that the administration played down the threat posed by Al Qaeda in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks and worried instead about Iraq.
The political fallout over Mr. Clarke's charges intensified on Sunday, as he and four of the president's top advisers traded jabs in separate televised appearances over the question of whether the Bush White House did enough to deter terrorism before Sept. 11.
Mr. Clarke, in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," urged the Bush administration to make public the testimony he gave in 2002 to a joint Congressional committee that was investigating the attacks.
He said declassifying his testimony — as well as other memorandums and materials from Ms. Rice and the administration — would show he had long complained that the Bush administration failed to take aggressive action against Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks.
In particular, he urged the administration to make public a memorandum on counterterrorism initiatives that he wrote just days after Mr. Bush took office, as well as a counterterrorism plan that the White House ultimately approved more than seven months later, a week before the attacks.
"Let's see if there's any difference between those two, because there isn't," he said. "And what we'll see when we declassify what they were given on Jan. 25 and what they finally agreed to on Sept. 4 is that they are basically the same thing, and they wasted months when we could have had some action."
Meanwhile, members of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks pressed Ms. Rice to appear publicly before the commission to explain the events leading up to the attack.
Ms. Rice "has appeared everywhere except my local Starbucks," Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the commission, said in an interview. "For the White House to continue to refuse to make her available simply does not make sense."
Ms. Rice met with the commission in February to discuss pre-Sept. 11 initiatives, but an official involved in that meeting said the White House insisted that she not be put under oath and that the session not be recorded. Commissioners were allowed to take notes, but no transcript of her comments is thought to exist.
The White House says that having the national security adviser testify in public would compromise executive privilege and the president's ability to get confidential advice.
The commission and the White House are continuing to discuss the possibility of Ms. Rice's reappearance. Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey governor who is co-chairman of the panel, said on "Fox News Sunday" that "we are still going to press and still believe unanimously as a commission that we should hear from her in public," although he added that a subpoena was unlikely.
Ms. Rice, for her part, said on "60 Minutes" that "nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify."
Analysts say Mr. Clarke's charges could do significant political damage to a president who has built his foreign policy record largely around the campaign against terrorism. Republican leaders have responded in force, suggesting that Mr. Clarke's testimony last week was at odds with the closed testimony he gave before the joint Congressional panel in 2002 and that he may have lied in one or both appearances.
But intelligence officials familiar with his classified briefing said they were aware of no obvious contradictions. Mr. Ben-Veniste said he thought Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony should be declassified to resolve any dispute, but he added that "it is not my recollection that there were any notable or substantive differences in testimony."
Mr. Clarke's Congressional testimony, given while he was still at the White House, put a more "positive spin" on the administration's counterterrorism efforts, just as he did in a 2002 press briefing that was released last week, said a senior Democratic Congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. But factually, it did not appear to contradict what Mr. Clarke told the Sept. 11 commission last week, the aide said.
Mr. Clarke's assessment last week is also generally consistent with journalistic and Congressional accounts of the early Bush administration's approach to terrorism.
In Bob Woodward's "Bush at War," the president himself acknowledged that Osama bin Laden had not been a central focus in the eight months before the attacks.
"I was not on point," Mr. Bush was quoted in the book as saying. "I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling."
Similarly, the public report of the joint Congressional inquiry into Sept. 11 intelligence failures, released last December, said that the Bush administration did not begin a major counterterrorism policy review until April 2001 and that "significant slippage in counterterrorism policy may have taken place in late 2000 and early 2001," in part because of Mr. Clarke's "unresolved status" as head of counterterrorism. He had that role under Clinton and for the first few months of the Bush administration. After Sept. 11, 2001, he had a more limited role as cyberterrorism adviser.
The public report does not describe Mr. Clarke's testimony before the joint committee in great detail, but it does suggest that he found areas of concern in counterterrorism coordination during both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Although Mr. Bin Laden would become an urgent priority in the late 1990's, "Mr. Clarke told the Joint Inquiry that Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah were the most important terrorist concerns during the first Clinton administration," the report said.
In general, the report said, "Mr. Clarke noted that the White House `never really gave good systematic, timely guidance to the Intelligence Community about what the priorities were at the national level,' " although the time period he described was unclear.
The Bush administration, which fought successfully to keep sensitive parts of last year's joint inquiry out of the public report, did not say if it would agree to declassify material from Mr. Clarke or Ms. Rice.
But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," said he would prefer publicizing as much relevant material as possible. "We're not trying to hide anything," he said.
Mr. Powell said an examination of Mr. Clarke's assessment in 2002 showed "inconsistencies and contradictions between what he is saying now and what he said then." And he said it was wrong to suggest the Bush administration simply abandoned the counterterrorism priorities of the Clinton administration.
"That's not the case," he said. "They weren't out bombing Afghanistan and invading Afghanistan and we suddenly said stop."
Ms. Rice, in particular, "is getting a bit of a bum rap," Mr. Powell said. She and other key advisers aggressively formulated counterterrorism policy, he said, but "unfortunately, we never got the information or intelligence that we needed to tell us that these 19 guys were in the country and already there was a plot under way."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week," disputing Mr. Clarke's charges that the administration had not devoted sufficient attention to terrorism and had been unduly focused on Iraq. And Terry Holt, the chief spokesman of the Bush campaign, called Mr. Clarke "a political opportunist" on CNN's "Inside Politics Sunday."
Mr. Clarke said the administration is intent on attacking him personally through a "character assassination campaign" rather than debating the arguments he has raised about Mr. Bush's prosecution of the campaign against terrorism.
"After 9/11, I say that by going into Iraq he has really hurt the war on terrorism," he said. "Now, because I say that, the administration doesn't want to talk on the merits of that. They don't want to talk about the effect on the war on terrorism of our invasion of Iraq."
To rebut the administration's criticism of his credibility, he produced a handwritten letter from Mr. Bush at the time of his resignation, dated Jan. 31, 2003, that read: "Dear Dick: You will be missed. You served our nation with distinction and honor. You have left a positive mark on our government."
Last week, the White House produced a resignation letter of its own — one from Mr. Clarke to Mr. Bush — in which the seasoned adviser praised the president for his "courage, determination, calm and leadership" on Sept. 11.
Andreucciolo
29-03-2004, 23:45
Ciao Giofx.
Volevo saper che ne pensavi riguardo ad una cosa: con tutte le storie dei giochi sporchi dei servizi segreti, a te non sembra strano che non abbiano voluto/saputo mettere su delle prove false?
In fondo l'Iraq è un paese enorme, non sarebbe stato cosi' difficile....io ancora non mi sono dato una spiegazione, anche se devo ammettere che questa evidenza ridimensiona molto quel cosiddetto "complottismo", per cui dietro a qualsiasi evento potrebbe esserci l'onnipresente CIA. Tu che ne dici?
OT vedo che sei di Padova, bella città, ci ho vissuto un anno e mezzo, quando ti capita beviti uno spritz alla mia salute....:)
Originariamente inviato da Andreucciolo
Ciao Giofx.
Volevo saper che ne pensavi riguardo ad una cosa: con tutte le storie dei giochi sporchi dei servizi segreti, a te non sembra strano che non abbiano voluto/saputo mettere su delle prove false?
In fondo l'Iraq è un paese enorme, non sarebbe stato cosi' difficile....io ancora non mi sono dato una spiegazione, anche se devo ammettere che questa evidenza ridimensiona molto quel cosiddetto "complottismo", per cui dietro a qualsiasi evento potrebbe esserci l'onnipresente CIA. Tu che ne dici?
Senza andare a scomodare sempre le teorie dei complotti, non si parla di alcun complotto, semplicemente ci si chiede (negli Stati Uniti come nel resto del mondo) perchè sono state adotte come motivazione principale alla guerra in Iraq prove che si sono rivelate quantomeno azzardate se non infodate sulla immediata pericolosità per la sicurezza degli Stati Uniti d'America, prima che per la tutela dei propri interessi nel medio oriente, e sulla disposizione da parte del regime iracheno di armi di distruzione di massa chimiche e batteriologiche.
OT vedo che sei di Padova, bella città, ci ho vissuto un anno e mezzo, quando ti capita beviti uno spritz alla mia salute....:)
Grazie, alla salute caro! ;)
Andreucciolo
30-03-2004, 00:45
No, scusa Giofx, forse non mi sono spiegato con chiarezza.
La mia non era una domanda retorica, sono informato su tutta la vicenda della guerra, e mi pare di capire che la tua posizione sia simile alla mia.
Quindi la mia domanda è da prendere alla lettera, volevo sapere tu cosa ne pensi del fatto che non hanno voluto o saputo costruire delle prove false per poter dire "visto che c'erano"?
Il riferimento ai complotti era riferito al fatto che spesso nel senso comune la CIA viene considerata pressochè onnipotente e onnipresente, in questo caso secondo te, perchè non hanno costruito delle false prove?
Spero di essere stato più chiaro:)
Originariamente inviato da Andreucciolo
No, scusa Giofx, forse non mi sono spiegato con chiarezza.
La mia non era una domanda retorica, sono informato su tutta la vicenda della guerra, e mi pare di capire che la tua posizione sia simile alla mia.
Quindi la mia domanda è da prendere alla lettera, volevo sapere tu cosa ne pensi del fatto che non hanno voluto o saputo costruire delle prove false per poter dire "visto che c'erano"?
Il riferimento ai complotti era riferito al fatto che spesso nel senso comune la CIA viene considerata pressochè onnipotente e onnipresente, in questo caso secondo te, perchè non hanno costruito delle false prove?
Spero di essere stato più chiaro:)
Si interessante come domanda, penso però che sarebbe assai difficile, oltre che dispendioso e pressochè inutile ormai costruire false prove... senza contare che questo sarebbe disastroso per l'amministrazione Bush se si dovesse realizzare una cosa del genere e si dovesse scoprirlo, considerando il putiferio che la cosa sta alzando in patria, con la campagna elettorale in atto.
Andreucciolo
30-03-2004, 01:00
Si, penso anch'io che il rischio non valesse la candela, tanto la guerra ormai era fatta e inganno o no, erano riusciti ad incassare l'appoggio "a scatola chiusa " di un certo numero di governi....
Tratto da un thread apparso su SSP (http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=36668):
As the Bush regime turns, reluctantly, away from its fruitless search for WMD in Iraq, it's important to remember that the Bush regime did, in fact, mislead America into war on false pretenses: despite protests to the contrary, Bush regime officials did indeed insist that Iraq was an imminent threat to the nation.
In Their Own Words: Iraq's 'Imminent' Threat
Originally posted January 29, 2004
americanprogress.org
The Bush Administration is now saying it never told the public that Iraq was an "imminent" threat, and therefore it should be absolved for overstating the case for war and misleading the American people about Iraq's WMD. Just this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at critics saying "Some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." But a closer look at the record shows that McClellan himself and others did use the phrase "imminent threat" – while also using the synonymous phrases "mortal threat," "urgent threat," "immediate threat", "serious and mounting threat", "unique threat," and claiming that Iraq was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction" – all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was "contained" and "threatens not the United States." While Iraq was certainly a dangerous country, the Administration's efforts to claim it never hyped the threat in the lead-up to war is belied by its statements.
"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
• White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03
"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
• President Bush, 7/17/03
Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03
"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."
• President Bush, 7/2/03
"Absolutely."
• White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03
"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
• President Bush 4/24/03
"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03
"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
• Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03
"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
• President Bush, 3/19/03
"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
• President Bush, 3/16/03
"This is about imminent threat."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03
Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03
Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
• Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03
"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03
"Well, of course he is.”
• White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question “is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?”, 1/26/03
"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03
"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
• President Bush, 1/3/03
"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."
• President Bush, 11/23/02
"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?"
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02
"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
• President Bush, 11/3/02
"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
• President Bush, 11/1/02
"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
• President Bush, 10/28/02
"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."
• President Bush, 10/16/02
"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
• President Bush, 10/7/02
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
• President Bush, 10/2/02
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
• President Bush, 10/2/02
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
• President Bush, 9/26/02
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02
"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02
"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02
Da Center for American Progress (http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=40520):
Condoleezza Rice's Credibility Gap
A point-by-point analysis of how one of America's top national security officials has a severe problem with the truth
Pre-9/11 Intelligence
CLAIM: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 5/16/02
FACT: On August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." In July 2001, the Administration was also told that terrorists had explored using airplanes as missiles. [Source: NBC, 9/10/02; LA Times, 9/27/01]
CLAIM: In May 2002, Rice held a press conference to defend the Administration from new revelations that the President had been explicitly warned about an al Qaeda threat to airlines in August 2001. She "suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
FACT: According to the CIA, the briefing "was not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
CLAIM: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so high…we were at battle stations." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'" Meanwhile, the Bush Administration decided to terminate "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Newsweek, 3/21/04]
CLAIM: "The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: President Bush and Vice President Cheney's counterterrorism task force, which was created in May, never convened one single meeting. The President himself admitted that "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"]
CLAIM: "Our [pre-9/11 NSPD] plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick: "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: "Right." Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]
Condi Rice on Pre-9/11 Counterterrorism Funding
CLAIM: "The president increased counterterrorism funding several-fold" before 9/11. – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/24/04
FACT: According to internal government documents, the first full Bush budget for FY2003 "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Source: New York Times, 2/28/04; Newsweek, 5/27/02]
Richard Clarke's Concerns
CLAIM: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. [Source: CBS 60 Minutes, 3/24/04; White House Press Release, 3/21/04
CLAIM: "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: "On January 25th, 2001, Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy of his 1998 Delenda plan to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice." – 9/11 Commission staff report, 3/24/04
Response to 9/11
CLAIM: "The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04]
9/11 and Iraq Invasion Plans
CLAIM: "Not a single National Security Council principal at that meeting recommended to the president going after Iraq. The president thought about it. The next day he told me Iraq is to the side." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: According to the Washington Post, "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document marked 'TOP SECRET'" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by a CBS News, which reported on 9/4/02 that five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq." [Source: Washington Post, 1/12/03. CBS News, 9/4/02]
Iraq and WMD
CLAIM: "It's not as if anybody believes that Saddam Hussein was without weapons of mass destruction." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/18/04
FACT: The Bush Administration's top weapons inspector David Kay "resigned his post in January, saying he did not believe banned stockpiles existed before the invasion" and has urged the Bush Administration to "come clean" about misleading America about the WMD threat. [Source: Chicago Tribune, 3/24/04; UK Guardian, 3/3/04]
9/11-al Qaeda-Iraq Link
CLAIM: "The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there is a connection. [Source: BBC, 9/14/03]
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Poi, mi sto chiedendo ancora come mai non abbiano provato a rovesciare Saddam con un colpo di stato, data la loro grande esperienze in questo tipo di attività, come hanno fatto in Iran, ad esempio...
:rolleyes:
perchè secondo te negli anni scorsi non ci hanno provato o cercato di favorire diverse volte?
evidentemente non era così semplice
Originariamente inviato da fabio69
perchè secondo te negli anni scorsi non ci hanno provato o cercato di favorire diverse volte?
evidentemente non era così semplice
non risulta da alcuna parte, e lo si sarebbe saputo a questo punto... considerando anche che sono esperti in questi giochetti...
ciò non toglie che è stato amico finchè serviva, e la guerra è stata fatta quando le armi di sterminio non esistevano più, non quando le aveva e le usava con il beneplacito del democratico occidente dei miei ********...
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
non risulta da alcuna parte, e lo si sarebbe saputo a questo punto... considerando anche che sono esperti in questi giochetti...
ciò non toglie che è stato amico finchè serviva, e la guerra è stata fatta quando le armi di sterminio non esistevano più, non quando le aveva e le usava con il beneplacito del democratico occidente dei miei ********...
risulta, risulta ed è pure risaputo
e toglie, oh se toglie :D ;)
Originariamente inviato da fabio69
risulta, risulta ed è pure risaputo
e toglie, oh se toglie :D ;)
:rotfl: :rotfl:
fabio, hanno una visione caricaturale anche le commissioni come quella sull'11 settembre? o forse le commissioni del congresso che pubblicano dossier come quelli sulla difesa e l'antiterrorismo, o sull'Iraq?
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
fabio, hanno una visione caricaturale anche le commissioni come quella sull'11 settembre? o forse le commissioni del congresso che pubblicano dossier come quelli sulla difesa e l'antiterrorismo, o sull'Iraq?
no, sono io che ho una visione caricaturale delle ricostruzioni forumistiche che girano su internet in proposito :D
Originariamente inviato da fabio69
no, sono io che ho una visione caricaturale delle ricostruzioni forumistiche che girano su internet in proposito :D
ricostruzioni? mah!
aspetto ancora qualcuno che mi spieghi il perchè di tante falsità:
- Iraq come pericolo immediato per la sicurezza degli Stati Uniti, dei suoi "alleati" e dei suoi interessi (GWB)
- Iraq in possesso di precise armi di distruzione di massa, chimiche e batteriologiche e armi convenzionali in grado di colpire un altro paese in 45 minuti (Powell, UN)
- Iraq in possesso di agenti chimici e batteriologici come antrace (Powell, UN)
- Iraq in possesso di uranio arricchito aquistato dal Niger (Powell, UN)
e poi dovete spiegarmi perchè (fonti: NYT, Reuters, ecc.):
- La "costituzione" irachena è carta straccia, dato che qualsiasi legge può essere bloccata da una qualsiasi delle parti che costituiscono il Governo Provvisorio Iracheno
- L'amministrazione provvisoria americana deterrà per un tempo indeterminato il controllo di tutta la sicurezza nel paese
- Gli Stati Uniti d'America potranno installare fino a 14 basi militari permanenti nel paese
- Gli Stati Uniti d'America hanno il 94% delle commesse per la ricostruzione e per l'installazione di piattaforme e condutture petrolifere, centrali elettriche e impianti di distribuzione, e altro
- L'amministrazione Bremer e gli alleati occupanti non controllano e non hanno intenzione di controllare le frontiere irachene
Grazie
Da prendere con le pinze, dato che non si può conoscere la credibilità della fonte, ad ogni modo, per dovere di cronaca... :O:
New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq
Friday, 16 April 2004
Article: Mehr News Agency
Tuesday 12 April 2004
BASRA - Fifty days after the first reports that the U.S. forces were unloading weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in southern Iraq, new reports about the movement of these weapons have been disclosed.
Given the recent scandals to the effect that the U.S. president was privy to the 9/11 plot, they might try to immediately announce the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to overshadow the scandals and prevent a further decline of Bush's public opinion rating as the election approaches.
Sources in Iraq speculate that occupation forces are using the recent unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into the country.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0404/S00164.htm
Da CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/18/iraq.main/index.html):
Eleven more U.S. troops die in Iraq
Eleven more U.S. troops die in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. troop deaths in Iraq reached 700, with 504 killed in combat, as the military on Sunday added 11 American casualties to the war's mounting death toll.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, meanwhile, on Sunday said he will withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq "in the shortest time possible."
Zapatero, who was sworn into office Saturday, had previously vowed to bring home Spain's 1,300 troops if the United Nations did not have "political and military control" in Iraq by June 30.
The U.S. casualties announced Sunday included five Marines who were killed in fierce fighting near Iraq's border with Syria.
The Marines were killed Saturday when a patrol reported coming under attack by insurgents with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades near the town of Husaybah, the Marines said.
Reinforcements, backed by helicopter support, also came under fire by insurgents operating from near Husaybah's former Ba'ath Party headquarters, the military said.
The fight continued through the night, the Marines said, pitting their troops against 120 to 150 insurgents. The Marines estimated 25 to 30 insurgents were killed in the attack.
They also reported seeing women and children surrounding mortar positions, but could not tell if they were there voluntarily, and said the insurgents fired at medical helicopters carrying wounded Marines from the battlefield.
Elsewhere, three U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday when their 1st Armored Division convoy was ambushed near the southern Iraqi town of Ad Diwaniyah.
A ninth American, who was assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit, was killed Saturday in fighting west of Baghdad in the violent Al Anbar province.
Also on Sunday, officials announced two more deaths. A U.S. soldier was killed and two others injured Saturday when their tank rolled over in north Baghdad, and another soldier died of wounds received in a roadside bombing Saturday.
Najaf, Fallujah relatively calm
Two Iraqi cities that have been centers of fighting between insurgents and U.S.-led coalition troops -- Najaf and Fallujah -- were relatively calm Sunday.
No talks were scheduled about the situation in Fallujah, the city west of Baghdad where fierce fighting dominated the first two weeks of April.
Outside the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf in south-central Iraq, coalition forces remained deployed while militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army retained control of the town.
Minor clashes were reported elsewhere in southern Iraq between al-Sadr supporters and other coalition forces.
The coalition wants to capture or kill al-Sadr, wanted for questioning in the killing of a rival cleric. Coalition troops also would like to render his outlawed militia, which has been fighting U.S. soldiers, harmless. There are several parties, including Iranians, trying to negotiate with al-Sadr.
Also Sunday, Pope John Paul II called on Iraqi kidnappers to show "humanity" and free their hostages, including U.S. Army Pfc. Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, a reservist from Batavia, Ohio.
In his weekly appearance in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sunday, the pontiff said he was "following with great sadness the tragic news that is coming out of the Holy Land and Iraq." (Full story)
New Iraqi military leaders chosen
Amid concerns that Iraq's security forces were inadequate to the task of securing the country, defense minister Ali Allawi announced newly appointed military leaders in his ministry and said the new Iraqi military would eventually number 200,000.
"Iraqi forces will be defensive in nature, composed of volunteers only," Allawi said in Baghdad. "The military will serve their people without religious or sectarian or tribal or political discrimination."
Allawi also said he was confident Iraqi forces would be able to handle "the enemies of Iraq [who] are carrying out aggressive acts to get Iraq back to the old days."
Additionally, the coalition announced that the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps had captured a suspected anticoalition leader near the northern city of Tikrit early Sunday.
Hakeem Badour Khalaf, the coalition said, has been implicated in the deaths or injuries of at least three people, including two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter.
In Baghdad, the Advisory City Council helped in the selection of a mayor Sunday. The council heard from the final eight mayoral candidates who were chosen from more than 90 applicants.
The Coalition Provision Authority has the final say in the matter after the council provides a list of the three candidates with the most votes. Coalition officials said they expected to confirm the council's choice.
Da Independent.co.uk (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=514687):
US admits it will still control Iraq after transfer
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
24 April 2004
The US has made clear that the transfer of sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government on 30 June will be a limited affair, and that ultimate authority will reside at a gigantic new US embassy in Baghdad and with the military occupation force.
In sometimes heated hearings on Capitol Hill this week, senior Bush administration officials admitted they did not know who would be in the new government, precisely what powers it would exercise, nor the exact shape of the new Security Council resolution that Washington is seeking at the United Nations.
Marc Grossman, Under-Secretary of State for political affairs, said the government would put "a very important Iraqi face" on many aspects of the country's life. But the US military, not the Iraqi security forces, would be in charge of all security matters.
Asked what would happen if the temporary government acted at variance with US foreign policy - such as by seeking closer ties with Iran - Mr Grossman implied that would not be tolerated. "That is why we want to have an American ambassador in Iraq," he noted cryptically.
The limitations can only complicate US efforts to win a fresh resolution at the UN, whose special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been finalising the new government. Its main task will be to prepare for elections next year, but some Security Council members may now balk at conferring UN legitimacyon a new Iraqi government whose powers are so limited.
The admissions by Mr Grossman come as pressure is intensifying on the Pentagon to bolster the US occupying force, and amid evidence that the costs of the occupation are rising even faster than the administration predicted. General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that military costs this year would run $4.7bn (£2.7bn) ahead of estimates.
In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Senator John McCain of Arizona, President Bush's unsuccessful rival for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, demanded the Pentagon send a division, roughly 15,000 men, to Iraq to reinforce the 135,000 US contingent there.
The President had to make clear the size of the commitment needed to prevail in Iraq, said Mr McCain, a strong supporter of the March 2003 invasion. "He needs to be perfectly frank: bringing peace and democracy to Iraq is an enormous endeavour that will be very expensive, difficult and long."
But more troops, coupled with what from 1 July will be the largest US embassy worldwide, with some 3,000 staff, will only underline how Washington will stay in charge, whatever nominal sovereignty is handed over to Iraqis. Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said: "On 1 July, Iraqis will wake up and there's going to be 160,000 troops and a US ambassador pulling the strings. How does that take the American face off the occupation?"
*Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, yesterday said he could unleash suicide bombers if US forces attacked the holy Shia city of Najaf, and called on the nation to unite to expel Iraq's occupiers. US troops are poised just outside Najaf and have vowed to kill or capture Sadr and destroy his Army of Mehdi militia, which has clashed with foreign forces across southern and central Iraq.
Outside View: Iraq 2004, Vietnam 1964
By Ted Galen Carpenter
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Washington, DC, Apr. 23 (UPI) -- As U.S. forces in Iraq reel from a rapidly expanding insurgency, Americans are beginning to ask whether we have stumbled into a Vietnam-style quagmire. It is appropriate to hesitate before making that comparison. Critics of U.S. military interventions have been too quick to invoke the Vietnam analogy in the past. We heard similar warnings about "another Vietnam" during the interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In all of those cases, the warnings were -- at the very least -- overblown.
But this time the critics appear to be right. The breadth of the insurgency, the difficulty the United States is encountering in pacifying the country, the inability to tell friend from foe, and the weakness and unreliability of pro-American indigenous factions are eerily reminiscent of Vietnam. America seems to be in a fight that it cannot win -- at least cannot win at any reasonable level of cost in terms of blood and treasure.
U.S. leaders now face a choice similar to the one Lyndon Johnson's administration confronted in 1964 and early 1965. At that time, it was becoming evident that a limited U.S. military commitment was insufficient to defeat the communist forces in South Vietnam. Administration leaders faced a stark choice: Withdraw American forces, even though Washington's credibility throughout the world might be damaged, or escalate by sending in more troops. The Johnson administration ignored the advice of realist foreign policy experts such as Hans Morgenthau and Walter Lippmann and chose to escalate. It thereby transformed a foreign policy setback into a debacle.
The choice in Iraq is much the same. Voices advocating escalation can be heard already, including Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. In a narrow sense, their analysis is correct: the United States does not currently have enough troops in Iraq to control the deteriorating situation.
But escalation would be as unwise and futile as it was in Vietnam. A growing number of Iraqis -- even those who originally were happy to see Saddam Hussein ousted -- now view the United States as an alien, occupying power. The willingness of Shiites and Sunnis to bury their long-standing rivalry and cooperate in the latest insurgent attacks is an especially ominous sign. Even worse, the occupation of Iraq has become a provocation to much of the Muslim world. We have overstayed our welcome in Iraq. Sending in more troops may dampen the current round of fighting, but it will not overcome those problems.
Admittedly, a rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is not without its drawbacks. America's credibility will take a hit, and radical Islamist forces will interpret the result as a victory for their side. Post-occupation Iraq could be a very ugly place, with a full-blown civil war a possibility. Those are all factors that advocates of the Iraq war should have considered before embarking on that mission. Opponents of the war warned that a U.S. intervention would create more instability, not less, in Iraq and throughout the region. Unfortunately, those warnings went unheeded, and we now face a choice of decidedly less than perfect options.
Advocates of staying the course blithely argue that we cannot "cut and run." But a principle from the world of investing applies to wise and prudent foreign policy. Smart investors know that it is better to cut losses early rather than stubbornly hold on to an investment that has gone sour -- much less pour more resources into such an investment. Those who defy that logic end up like the Enron and Worldcom investors who rode those stocks all the way to the bottom.
The U.S. mission in Iraq is an investment that clearly has gone sour. We should cut our losses now, while they are relatively modest. If we don't, we will likely be compelled to terminate the mission later under even less favorable circumstances. Moreover, by then we will have wasted tens of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in a futile venture. A smart superpower should not make such a blunder.
(Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. He is also the author or editor of 15 books on international affairs.)
(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
Da http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040423-120019-1348r.htm
Beh, se le cose vanno come credo...
Vietnam 1975, Iraq 2015
:O
Londra - 18/05/2004 (11:23)
Iraq, Straw: forse 10.000 le vittime irachene
Il ministro degli Esteri britannico Jack Straw ha ammesso che non si riesce a tenere il conto delle vittime irachene e che secondo una stima di massima, dall'inizio del conflitto dovrebbero essere intorno alle 10.000. "In un mondo perfetto" ha detto Straw ai microfoni della Bbc ciò non dovrebbe accadere, ma evidentemente non è possibile.
Ieri il quotidiano The Independent aveva dedicato tutta la sua prima pagina a questo argomento titolando: "777 americani e 67 britannici sono stati uccisi dall'inizio della guerra. Perchè non si contano i morti iracheni?".
Ancora le parole famose di Rumsfeld...
Da http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/n02082003_200302081.html:
He said Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, and other nations, gladdened him with recent statements of support "expressing their determination that Iraq disarm itself of its weapons of mass destruction.
He said such declarations demonstrate that the world is increasingly united in seeing Iraq jettison its WMDs and the means to deliver them.
Saddam Hussein wouldn't hesitate to use his deadly arsenal in the future, Rumsfeld pointed out in Rome. And, he noted, such weaponry could well fall into the hands of terrorists.
von Clausewitz
28-05-2004, 00:22
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Beh, se le cose vanno come credo...
Vietnam 1975, Iraq 2015
:O
ROTFL
che fregnaccia, Gio :spam: :rolleyes: :D
von Clausewitz
28-05-2004, 00:25
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Londra - 18/05/2004 (11:23)
Iraq, Straw: forse 10.000 le vittime irachene
Il ministro degli Esteri britannico Jack Straw ha ammesso che non si riesce a tenere il conto delle vittime irachene e che secondo una stima di massima, dall'inizio del conflitto dovrebbero essere intorno alle 10.000. "In un mondo perfetto" ha detto Straw ai microfoni della Bbc ciò non dovrebbe accadere, ma evidentemente non è possibile.
Ieri il quotidiano The Independent aveva dedicato tutta la sua prima pagina a questo argomento titolando: "777 americani e 67 britannici sono stati uccisi dall'inizio della guerra. Perchè non si contano i morti iracheni?".
e io che ti avevo detto qualche settimana fa?
The Independent è un quotidiano spocchioso che fa moralismo un tanto al chilo
e robert fisk, dalla guerra in kosovo a quella in afghanistan, su cui mi ha edotto il caro cerbert (su fisk intendo), ha scritto esclusivamente fregnaccie
Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
e io che ti avevo detto qualche settimana fa?
The Independent è un quotidiano spocchioso che fa moralismo un tanto al chilo
e robert fisk, dalla guerra in kosovo a quella in afghanistan, su cui mi ha edotto il caro cerbert (su fisk intendo), ha scritto esclusivamente fregnaccie
che mi avevi detto tu?
von Clausewitz
28-05-2004, 00:34
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
che mi avevi detto tu?
che i morti iracheni si potevano far ascendere a circa 10.000
do you remember?
Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
che i morti iracheni si potevano far ascendere a circa 10.000
do you remember?
non eri tu, era fabio...
e cmq non vedo la differenza... cos'è tutto questo puntualizzare? per te sono pochi 10k morti?!?
von Clausewitz
28-05-2004, 01:03
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
non eri tu, era fabio...
ah già, è vero :banned: :eheh:
e cmq non vedo la differenza... cos'è tutto questo puntualizzare? per te sono pochi 10k morti?!?
con te è una coazione a ripetere, 10.000 morti, sono tanti, troppi, ma con 15.000 c'è una differenza del 50%
e come se dicessi che milosevic in giro per i balcani non ha fatto 200.000 morti, bensì 300.000 e forse avrei fatto bene a dirlo, con l'andazzo di questo forum di dare numeri a caso :rolleyes:
Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
ah già, è vero :banned: :eheh:
l'hanno bannato? :confused:
con te è una coazione a ripetere, 10.000 morti, sono tanti, troppi, ma con 15.000 c'è una differenza del 50%
e come se dicessi che milosevic in giro per i balcani non ha fatto 200.000 morti, bensì 300.000 e forse avrei fatto bene a dirlo, con l'andazzo di questo forum di dare numeri a caso :rolleyes:
ma te da dove li prendi i numeri, sapientone? :O
e poi, perchè Straw dovrebbe essere più affidabile? Anzi, non avrebbe tutto l'interesse presentare numeri inferiori?
von Clausewitz
28-05-2004, 01:19
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
aspetto ancora qualcuno che mi spieghi il perchè di tante falsità:
siccome adesso non ho niente da scrivere provo io a dipanare qualche tuo dubbio, Gio
- Iraq come pericolo immediato per la sicurezza degli Stati Uniti, dei suoi "alleati" e dei suoi interessi (GWB)
che l'iraq costituisse un pericolo per la sicurezza degli USA non è stata prerogativa solo dell'amministrazione Bush, tutte le amministrazioni succedutesi sin qui dalla guerra del golfo hanno ritenuto l'iraq di saddam una minaccia, e in questo senso l'amministrazione Clinton non ha fatto eccezione
che poi questa minaccia, questo pericolo sia stato sopravalutato è un altro discorso, solo per dirti che non è solo Bush ad aver avuto un accostamento del genere verso l'iraq
- Iraq in possesso di precise armi di distruzione di massa, chimiche e batteriologiche e armi convenzionali in grado di colpire un altro paese in 45 minuti (Powell, UN)
- Iraq in possesso di agenti chimici e batteriologici come antrace (Powell, UN)
Powell si è sbagliato, lo ha ammesso publicamente, che altro vuoi di più?
e in ciò è stato indotto da alcuni rapporti "esagerati" della Cia
senza dimenticare cmq che quello delle armi di distruzione di massa era più che altro un pretesto
- Iraq in possesso di uranio arricchito aquistato dal Niger (Powell, UN)
errore subito riconosciuto e nel quale c'è stato lo zampino maldestro dei nostri servizi segreti
e poi dovete spiegarmi perchè (fonti: NYT, Reuters, ecc.):
- La "costituzione" irachena è carta straccia, dato che qualsiasi legge può essere bloccata da una qualsiasi delle parti che costituiscono il Governo Provvisorio Iracheno
beh, questo lo dici tu
- L'amministrazione provvisoria americana deterrà per un tempo indeterminato il controllo di tutta la sicurezza nel paese
la cosa è in via d'evoluzione
- Gli Stati Uniti d'America potranno installare fino a 14 basi militari permanenti nel paese
fregnaccia
- Gli Stati Uniti d'America hanno il 94% delle commesse per la ricostruzione e per l'installazione di piattaforme e condutture petrolifere, centrali elettriche e impianti di distribuzione, e altro
non so, non credo che le percentuali siano in queste proporzioni
ma se anche fosse, non vedo perchè i soldi dei contribuenti americani debbano andare a imprese di altri paesi e non a quelle americane (comunque tutti i partecipanti la coalizioni hanno avuto le loro generose commesse, del quale peraltro non hanno sempre aprofittato)
- L'amministrazione Bremer e gli alleati occupanti non controllano e non hanno intenzione di controllare le frontiere irachene
Grazie
:confused:
von Clausewitz
28-05-2004, 01:23
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
l'hanno bannato? :confused:
:rolleyes:
ma te da dove li prendi i numeri, sapientone? :O
e poi, perchè Straw dovrebbe essere più affidabile? Anzi, non avrebbe tutto l'interesse presentare numeri inferiori?
non so, l'avrò letto nel giornale, non ricordo
cmq basta fare una robusta tara alle cifre che sparate voi per avvicinarsi alla realtà :D
Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
Powell si è sbagliato, lo ha ammesso publicamente, che altro vuoi di più?
e in ciò è stato indotto da alcuni rapporti "esagerati" della Cia
senza dimenticare cmq che quello delle armi di distruzione di massa era più che altro un pretesto
ah si, è vero... tutta colpa della CIA, noi non c'entrimao, abbiamo solo scatenato una cazzo di guerra assurda per futili motivi e per scelte legate a precisi interessi politici ed economici, non per necessità. Scusate se vi abbiamo mentito, la prossima volta andiamo io e rummy con il fucile in mano...
beh, questo lo dici tu
no no, l'hanno detto LORO STESSI... membri kurdi e sunniti anyone? e poi se non è così, perchè diavolo ne stanno facendo un altro di governo?
la cosa è in via d'evoluzione
in che modo? "forse" nel 2005 si ritireranno?
non so, non credo che le percentuali siano in queste proporzioni
ma se anche fosse, non vedo perchè i soldi dei contribuenti americani debbano andare a imprese di altri paesi e non a quelle americane (comunque tutti i partecipanti la coalizioni hanno avuto le loro generose commesse, del quale peraltro non hanno sempre aprofittato)
i dati erano della CNN. Clausey, non fare lo gnorri... il punto è che gli americani e i pochi lecchini che hanno dietro (se si escludono una 20a di paesi di microscopica rilevanza) si acaparreranno tutti i proventi della ricostruzione e dello sfruttamento totale o parziale a tempo inditerminato di infrastrutture e risorse, e gli iracheni se ne rimarranno a bocca ascicutta... beh, normale questo...
domanda: il petrolio iracheno che viene esportato dalla caduta di Saddam in poi, da chi viene gestito, i proventi a chi finiscono?
Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
:rolleyes:
:confused:
non so, l'avrò letto nel giornale, non ricordo
cmq basta fare una robusta tara alle cifre che sparate voi per avvicinarsi alla realtà :D
te pareva...
von Clausewitz
28-05-2004, 01:53
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
ah si, è vero... tutta colpa della CIA, noi non c'entrimao, abbiamo solo scatenato una cazzo di guerra assurda per futili motivi e per scelte legate a precisi interessi politici ed economici, non per necessità. Scusate se vi abbiamo mentito, la prossima volta andiamo io e rummy con il fucile in mano...
che si fa, ricominciamo da capo?
guarda che le ragioni della guerra sono state sviscerate per bene anche in questo forum (e pazienza se il 99% erano fregnaccie :D)
no no, l'hanno detto LORO STESSI... membri kurdi e sunniti anyone? e poi se non è così, perchè diavolo ne stanno facendo un altro di governo?
un conto è la costituzione come legge fondamentale di uno stato
un altro è la costituzione provvisoria, in attesa evidentemente di averne una definitiva
un altro ancora è il governo di un paese
tutte chiare le distinzioni?
in che modo? "forse" nel 2005 si ritireranno?
vorrà dire che per deciderlo sfoglieranno i petali di una margherita o tireranno a testa o croce
abbi pazienza, non avendo la sfera di cristallo, non posso darti altre risposte
i dati erano della CNN. Clausey, non fare lo gnorri... il punto è che gli americani e i pochi lecchini che hanno dietro (se si escludono una 20a di paesi di microscopica rilevanza) si acaparreranno tutti i proventi della ricostruzione e dello sfruttamento totale o parziale a tempo inditerminato di infrastrutture e risorse, e gli iracheni se ne rimarranno a bocca ascicutta... beh, normale questo...
beh, mettiamola così, gli americani dei loro soldi ci fanno quel che vogliono, ti piaccia o no
mi sembra il minimo
domanda: il petrolio iracheno che viene esportato dalla caduta di Saddam in poi, da chi viene gestito, i proventi a chi finiscono?
evidentemente i proventi del petrolio, di quel poco che faticosamente si ricomincia a pompare, viene investito nella ricostruzione
perchè secondo te dove finirebbero?
sycret_area
28-05-2004, 09:52
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Iraq on the Record - The Bush Administration Public Statements on Iraq (http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/)
Nel sito riportato potete trovare tutte le dichiarazioni sull'Iraq e le motivazioni adotte alla sua invasione dal governo americano. Il report dettagliato di tutte le fonti è curato dal Comitato per la Riforma Governativa (http://www.house.gov/reform/min), una speciale commissione parlamentare della Camera dei Rappresentati americana.
Io mi chiedo ancora dove sono quei fantasmagorici laboratori chimici mobili... :D
non so se ci siano davvero questi laboratori, ma chi vi dice che necessariamente siano in Iraq?
The UN must be somewhat trustworthy since Bush wants to let the UN have alot more to do with the transition in Iraq. Which is odd considering how its basically useless according to him since it did not support the Iraq War. Very odd...
President outlines ideology of war on terror to Air Force graduates
http://sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2004/06/03/mn_bush01.jpg
MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
(06-02) 11:45 PDT AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP)
President Bush compared the fight against terrorists to the struggle against tyranny that forced World War II, telling new Air Force officers Wednesday that the United States and its allies can win the battle by bringing freedom and reform to the Middle East.
"Our goal, the goal of this generation, is the same" as it was in World War II, Bush said. "We will secure our nation and defend the peace through the forward march of freedom."
Bush told 981 graduates of the Air Force Academy that they will be joining a war whose central front is Iraq and the broader Middle East.
The graduates wore dress uniforms of white pants, blue tunics and gold sashes around their waists. Bush spoke in the academy's football stadium -- at more than 7,000 feet above sea level -- under partly cloudy and breezy skies.
"Just as events in Europe determined the outcome of the Cold War," he said, "events in the Middle East will set the course of our current struggle."
"If that region is abandoned to dictators and terrorists, it will be a constant source of violence and alarm, exporting killers of increasing destructive power to attack America and other free nations," Bush said. "If that region grows in democracy and prosperity and hope, the terrorist movement will lose its sponsors, lose its recruits and lose the festering grievances that keep terrorists in business."
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., an Air Force Academy graduate, were among the officials who joined Bush on stage.
Bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq, Bush has argued, will undercut the stagnation and despair that feeds the extremist ideologies of al-Qaida and its terrorist allies.
In Washington, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed a "Middle East 21st-century trust" as an alternative to Bush's Mideast initiative. The trust would use donations from wealthy countries to make grants aimed at economic and political reform in the Mideast. Lugar said the trust would be modeled on programs like the Global Aids Fund, the G-8 Africa Action Plan and the U.S. Millennium Challenge Account.
Lugar said his proposal incorporates many of the principles of Bush's Mideast initiative but emphasizes the participation of many nations, including wealthy Mideast countries like Saudi Arabia. And, the recipient nations themselves would develop specific programs so as to bring about a "restructuring of the region from within," Lugar said.
Defending his focus, Bush said, "Some who call themselves realists question whether the spread of democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours. But the realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality: America has always been less secure when freedom is in retreat; America is always more secure when freedom is on the march."
The president's trip to Colorado came after he voiced his support Tuesday for the interim Iraqi government taking shape before the scheduled June 30 transfer of political power from the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority. Bush praised the newly chosen prime minister, Iyad Allawi, and president, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, as part of democracy's vanguard in Iraq.
--
Our enemies deserve "freedom and democracy" but apparently our friends in the region do not. (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan).
:rolleyes:
"Just as events in Europe determined the outcome of the Cold War, events in the Middle East will set the course of our current struggle."
I like this comparison of a series of diplomatic and territorial disputes, that had no major combat operations, and were between the two superpowers of the time, to our invasion and occupation of a 3rd world country. Lots of relevence....
He should be shot for comparing this debacle to WWII. Dumbest analogy ever.
:mano:
How dare that spoiled piece of shit disrespect a war my grandfathers spilled blood over to push his bullshit political agenda. My grandpa has holes you can stick your whole fist in on his back from bullet and shrapnel wounds in Africa and Italy, while this peice of shit trounces around like a arrogant fucken cowboy. Amazing that NONE of his children are serving in the military, including his draft dodging ass in Vietnam.
This must be some kind of response to the fact that MANY are calling this 'Nam all over again, another war my uncles served in while his pussy ass was awol.
http://www.skyscraperpage.com/forum/images/smilies/tup.gif
vi abbiamo appena presentato "Le crociate anti americane di GioFX" :D YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Originariamente inviato da 737373
vi abbiamo appena presentato "Le crociate anti americane di GioFX" :D YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
in sfizzera lo insegnano l'inglese? :nono:
alla fine quindi chi vince è proprio l'ONU, e cioè quell'organismo che prima gli americani contribuirono a fondare (e che si trova in america), e che poi è stato definito inutile ed un ferro vecchio proprio dal presidente americano...
una vittoria pariziale, sia chiaro, dato il ciò che dice la risoluzione e il mancato potere pieno al governo e l'assenza di una scadenza per il ritoro degli occupanti dall'Iraq.
von Clausewitz
09-06-2004, 16:17
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
alla fine quindi chi vince è proprio l'ONU, e cioè quell'organismo che prima gli americani contribuirono a fondare (e che si trova in america), e che poi è stato definito inutile ed un ferro vecchio proprio dal presidente americano...
una vittoria pariziale, sia chiaro, dato il ciò che dice la risoluzione e il mancato potere pieno al governo e l'assenza di una scadenza per il ritoro degli occupanti dall'Iraq.
L'ONU vince?
ma davvero per te l'ONU esiste a prescindere dai singoli stati che lo compongono?
Gio, cerchiamo di essere una volta tanto realisti, evitando di far passare come vittorie dei semplici accordi fra stati nel consiglio di sicurezza
accordi che comunque, come naturale che siano, salvaguardano l'impostazione americana sul problema irakeno
Originariamente inviato da von Clausewitz
L'ONU vince?
ma davvero per te l'ONU esiste a prescindere dai singoli stati che lo compongono?
Gio, cerchiamo di essere una volta tanto realisti, evitando di far passare come vittorie dei semplici accordi fra stati nel consiglio di sicurezza
accordi che comunque, come naturale che siano, salvaguardano l'impostazione americana sul problema irakeno
Non importa cosa rappresentino oggi le Nazioni Unite e l'utilità o meno che tu le attribuisci. Resta il fatto che lo stesso organismo che è stato definito un ferro vecchio inutile da parte dell'amministrazione Bush ora è diventato il paravento fondamentale per condividere e scaricare sugli gli altri i propri fallimenti e sperare così di uscire dalla merda.
Se l'ONU era inutile e la guerra era giusta, non si doveva tornarci promuovendo con tutte le proprie forze una nuova risoluzione e arrivando a supplicare di non porre veti ai francesi, russi e cinesi. Il ritorno alle supremazia delle Nazioni Unite quale luogo di discussione e risoluzione delle controversie geopolitiche internazionali è la dichiarazione ufficiale del fallimento della dottrina della guerra preventiva unilaterale, che l'amministrazione americana assieme ai suoi più fidati lacchè ha intrapreso all'indomani dell'11 settembre, e messo in atto un anno e mezzo fa.
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/international/middleeast/21IRAQ.html?hp):
Iraq Government Considers Using Emergency Rule
By DEXTER FILKINS and SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: June 21, 2004
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/06/21/international/iraq1.jpg
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi made clear on Sunday that he intended to act against the insurgency in Iraq.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 20 — Faced with violent resistance even before it has assumed power, Iraq's newly appointed government is considering imposing a state of emergency that could involve curfews and a ban on public demonstrations, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
In his first news briefing here, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi offered no details of what emergency rule might include, only that a committee of cabinet members had been appointed to consider the issue.
Dr. Allawi, who worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency in opposing Saddam Hussein's government in the 1990's, said he would consider "human rights principles and international law," but made clear that he intended to act quickly and forcefully against the insurgency, using extraordinary methods if necessary.
"We will do all we can to strike against enemy forces aiming at harming our country, and we will not stand by with our hands tied," Dr. Allawi said. "The Iraqi people are determined to establish a democratic government that provides freedom and equal rights for all its citizens. We are prepared to fight and, if necessary, die for the cause."
Among the places where such measures could be applied include the city of Falluja, where United States forces have been battling guerrilla fighters for several weeks, and Sadr City, the restive eastern slum in Baghdad, where three Iraqis were killed Sunday in confrontations with the First Infantry Division.
Among the emergency rule provisions being considered are a curfew, a ban on public demonstrations, checkpoints to control public movement and changes to search and seizure laws, two cabinet members said in separate interviews on Sunday evening.
It remains unclear whether such measures would bring significant changes in the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Under the United States-led occupation, occupation and Iraqi soldiers and security forces have been allowed to conduct raids without warrants, make arrests without charges, and hold suspects in detention indefinitely.
If some sort of emergency rule is imposed, it is possible that this situation could persist. Iraq's new leaders have yet to work out the exact nature of their cooperation with the American military in the coming months, particularly on such issues as offensive operations and house-to-house searches.
However, Iraqi officials have often criticized American forces for the way they have conducted themselves here over the past 15 months. A frequent complaint of Iraqi leaders is that the Americans often alienate ordinary Iraqis by searching the wrong homes and detaining the wrong people.
The Iraqi leaders have said they know far better who the insurgents are. The restoration of sovereignty here on June 30 may give those leaders an opportunity to take the counterinsurgency in another direction.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said the potential measures were prompted by a tide of attacks by "global terrorists" as well as Hussein loyalists who, as he put it, "will not let the country go through the transitional process towards democracy peacefully."
"They will try to derail the political process," Mr. Rubaie said. "It is our responsibility to protect our people from these terrorists. If you bear all this in mind, then some sort of exceptional rules, if you like, need to be adopted to deal with the exceptional circumstances."
Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib said he hoped that if emergency rule were imposed, it would happen only in particularly fractious areas and for no more than two to three weeks at a time. He also hinted at the delicate political balance that the interim government must strike, between winning the confidence of ordinary Iraqis and crushing what has already proven to be a powerful armed resistance.
"We have disturbances in the whole country, but many areas could be controlled very easily, and others will be a little more difficult," Mr. Naqib said. "But also we have to work politically with many groups. We don't want to use force very much. If we have to use it with certain terrorists like Al Qaeda or anyone else, then we will not hesitate to use it."
Neither he nor other officials would say when a decision would be made about emergency rule.
The head of the Iraqi bar association, Kamal Hamdoon Mulla Allaw, said he hoped that such measures would be imposed only for a short period. Hamza al-Kafi, of the Iraqi Human Rights Society, said he too hoped that any such measures would be limited in scope and time and that they would not be used for political advantage.
As the transfer of sovereignty approaches, insurgents have stepped up attacks on interim government officials and security forces.
/>On Sunday morning, the interior minister's house in Samarra was attacked and four bodyguards were killed. Last Thursday, a car bomb ripped through an army recruitment center in Baghdad, killing at least 41 people. Dozens of local officials and many senior members of the government in Baghdad have been assassinated.
Prime Minister Allawi also announced a significant expansion of the Iraqi Army and its rededication toward internal threats. The army, which currently has about 3,000 soldiers, would take control of more than 37,500 troops who make up the existing Iraqi Civil Defense Corps as part of a new National Guard.
Together with the new Iraqi antiterrorism force now being trained here, the armed forces available to combat insurgents could total more than 60,000 soldiers.
The decision to use the army against the insurgency represents a change to American policy, which had intended the force to be directed against foreign threats and, most important, to be small. American policy makers had wanted to ensure that the Iraqi Army, which has played a significant role in shaping the country's political history, could be kept out of domestic politics.
Dr. Allawi acknowledged that concern but said the extraordinary circumstances presented by the insurgency demanded a special response. He said that for the "foreseeable future," the army would be fighting insurgents, rather than guarding borders.
"Our army's priority will continue to be national defense," he said. "However, in these difficult times, substantial elements of the army will have to assist in the struggle against internal threats against national security."
The reconstitution of the army amounts to another step away from the American decision of spring 2003 to dissolve the Iraqi Army. That decision has been roundly criticized, by Dr. Allawi and others, as having contributed to the insurgency by pushing thousands of young men with military training into unemployment.
In response to that criticism, American officials announced last month that they would begin rehiring higher-level army officers who had earlier been banned from serving in the armed forces.
"Disbanding the Iraqi Army was a big mistake," Dr. Allawi said. "We are fixing the mistakes of the Americans, aren't we?"
Together, redirecting the army toward internal threats and possibly imposing emergency rule illustrated the grim choices Dr. Allawi and his cabinet feel they have to make in their early days in office.
Dr. Allawi said the United States had agreed "in principle" to transfer custody of Iraqis suspected of involvement in the insurgency and for criminal acts to the Iraqi government after June 30.
He offered a vigorous vision of combating the guerrilla insurgency, which he said was "systematically destroying the country."
"The enemy we are fighting is truly evil," he said. "They have nothing to offer the Iraqi people except death and destruction."
He appealed to foreign countries to help protect the United Nations staff members who would be working in the country to prepare for elections later this year or early next.
Meanwhile, Moktada al-Sadr, the young Shiite cleric who led an uprising against the American occupation, has been invited to attend a national conference that will select a quasi-legislature to advise the interim government, Agence France-Press reported Sunday.
The invitation appears to be part of a broader effort to bring Mr. Sadr into the political mainstream. His insurgent force, the Mahdi Army, took heavy losses from American forces over the past three months, but Mr. Sadr soared in popularity, according to recent opinion polls.
The council that will be selected during the national conference will have a wide array of powers, including authority to approve the national budget and to question ministers.
Copyright 2004, New York Times
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/politics/12panel.html?hp):
Final 9/11 Report Is Said to Dismiss Iraq-Qaeda Alliance
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: July 12, 2004
WASHINGTON, July 11 - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is nearing completion of a final, probably unanimous report that will stand by the conclusions of the panel's staff and largely dismiss White House theories both about a close working relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda and about possible Iraqi involvement in Sept. 11, commission officials said.
The report, which is expected to be made public several days before the panel's mandated deadline of July 26, will also probably be unwelcome at the White House because it will document management failures at senior levels of the Bush administration that kept the government from acting aggressively on intelligence warnings in the spring and summer of 2001 of an imminent, catastrophic terrorist attack, the officials said.
Campaign advisers to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, have said they eagerly await the commission's report, believing it will damage President Bush by showing that he and his senior aides were inattentive to dire threats before Sept. 11 and may have misled the nation about the reasons for the war in Iraq.
At the commission's request, the White House in April declassified and made public an intelligence report given to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6, 2001 - 36 days before the attacks - that was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
Commission members said the final report would not single out government officials by name for intelligence or law enforcement blunders before Sept. 11. But they said the report would criticize several agencies for their performance in both the Bush and Clinton administrations, especially the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and call for an overhaul of the nation's counterterrorism efforts.
The officials declined to detail the report's recommendations but said they would call for a shakeup of the F.B.I.'s domestic counterintelligence program and for equally broad changes at the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, possibly by adding to the authority of the director of central intelligence to oversee the work of agencies beyond the C.I.A.
The panel's expected call for change at the C.I.A. would be bolstered by the findings of a Senate intelligence committee report that was made public on Friday, which blamed the agency for systematically exaggerating the evidence that Iraq had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear arms, the central justification for last year's invasion.
"We don't need to point fingers in our report, because people will be able to judge the facts for themselves," said John F. Lehman, a Republican commissioner who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration.
Mr. Lehman has said that he expects the commission's work to result in "revolutionary" changes in the government's intelligence community. "The editorializing has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk as the facts before us have expanded and expanded and expanded," he said.
Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic commissioner who is a former House member from Indiana, said he expected the final report to be unanimous and to call for "dynamic and dramatic changes in the intelligence community - changes in tradecraft and also nuts-and-bolts changes."
The panel's staff created controversy last month with an interim report that largely discounted theories about close ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, another major justification cited by the Bush administration for invading Iraq.
The staff report found that there was "no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States" and that repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
The staff also said that it did not believe a widely circulated report from Czech intelligence that a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer in April 2001, suggesting Iraqi involvement in the attacks.
The findings were in marked contrast to statements by President Bush and, more often, Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been the administration's lead spokesman in arguing that an alliance existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Though Mr. Cheney insisted that he had no major differences with the commission and that the debate was being mischaracterized in news reports, the vice president responded to the staff report last month by telling a television interviewer that "there clearly was a relationship" between President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Al Qaeda and that "the evidence is overwhelming," noting that he "probably" had access to intelligence information not reviewed by the commission. He also insisted that the Czech intelligence report might be credible.
Despite initial suggestions from the commission's leaders that they might rewrite the staff report to limit its conclusions that discounted a possible Iraq-Qaeda tie, commission members and the panel's chief spokesman said last week that the panel had decided to stand by the staff in the final report.
That reasoning was bolstered last week by the findings of the Senate intelligence committee, which cited several classified intelligence reviews prepared by the C.I.A. after Sept. 11 that suggested that evidence of a close relation between Iraq and Al Qaeda was "murky" and at times contradictory. The Senate committee said the C.I.A. had "reasonably concluded" that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda "did not add up to an established formal relationship" between Mr. Hussein and the terror network.
''We believe we have seen everything now that the vice president has seen and we continue to stand on the staff statements," said Al Felzenberg, a commission spokesman.
He suggested that the commission's final report would go further than interim staff reports in documenting contacts over the years between Iraqi government and military officials and Al Qaeda's leadership. This may placate the White House to some extent by showing extensive communication between Iraq and Qaeda leaders.
"We expect the final report to enumerate on some of the contacts that were made between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and there were a number of points of contacts,'' Mr. Felzenberg said.
Commission members met in Washington last week to decide on the final wording of several chapters of the report. Several said afterward that they were increasingly optimistic that any differences between the five Democratic and five Republican members could be set aside and that they could agree on a unanimous report and on recommendations for overhauling the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other counterterrorism agencies.
They noted, however, that they had not concluded their deliberations of some of the central policy recommendations, and that those issues were so contentious that they could prove to be a stumbling block to a unanimous report.
''We're still working through final iterations, but I think that on the main points, there seems to be consensus,'' said Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor who is a Democratic member of the panel. ''This commission operates on a very collegial basis, and I have found that talking through these issues has produced much more that we find in common than in opposition.'' Mr. Roemer said his "optimism is growing every day" about the possibility of a unanimous report.
The commission is trying to complete its work and publish the final report sometime during the week of July 18, to avoid being overshadowed by news from the Democratic convention, which opens on July 26.
Mr. Felzenberg said that the White House - through the office of Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's chief of staff - appeared ready to move quickly to declassify chapters of the report as they are completed by the commission. "I can say it's going smoothly," he said.
Under a procedure established by the commission last year, the White House has reviewed and declassified 17 interim staff reports released by the commission at a series of public hearings since January.
The commission has said that as it completes chapters of its final report, they will be given to the White House for a final security review. Commission officials said that since so much of the final report is built upon information in interim reports that have already been declassified, the final review process would be relatively straightforward.
Mr. Felzenberg said that the commission's staff investigators had essentially finished their work, though they would keep gathering information until shortly before publication of the final report.
The White House said last week that Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, had recently provided the panel with written answers to a final set of questions submitted by the commission. The White House and the commission would not describe the issues raised by the panel in its questions to Ms. Rice.
3 Billion of Iraqi Reconstruction Money Being Re-Allocated to Oil Production
U.S. shifts Iraq rebuilding funds to security, oil
General defends copter strike that killed journalist, 11 others
Tuesday, September 14, 2004 Posted: 10:40 PM EDT (0240 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The United States announced it will shift more than $3 billion earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction to improve security and oil production, the State Department said Tuesday.
The news came the same day that insurgents launched two deadly assaults at Iraqi police targets -- killing 47 people in a car bombing at a police recruit line in Baghdad and 12 police officers in a drive-by shooting in Baquba.
"Without security, there's no possibility, as many power plants as you have, to actually get electricity, water, sewage, power to Iraqis," said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman. "And so that's why so much of this money and the reallocation that you see is moving toward security."
In order to offset the redirection of money, the United States will reduce spending on water and sewage projects by $1.9 billion and electricity by $1 billion.
Iraq has identified improving water, sewage and electricity as important reconstruction projects. Robin Raphel, a former ambassador who now works on Iraqi reconstruction issues at the State Department, acknowledged that few Iraqis have access to potable water and that most receive electricity for about half the day only.
But Grossman said Iraqis "understand our priorities and certainly understand the issue that if there's no security, nothing else is going to get done."
U.S. officials also plan to divert $450 million into Iraq's oil sector to increase production during the next six to eight months in an effort to create extra income to pay for the shortfall caused by the redirection of funds.
"The specific projects that they will target with this $450 million have an early payoff according to the engineers, according to the analysis that was done," Raphel said.
In October 2003, Congress appropriated $87 billion to help fund the war in Iraq -- $18.7 billion of which was set aside for reconstruction. About $4.08 billion of that was allocated for sewage, water and electricity projects.
The State Department said about $650 million of that $4.08 billion has already been spent.
U.S. officials have said most of the funding earmarked for reconstruction was not being spent because poor security was preventing projects from being completed.
Violence continues
Deadly attacks against police targets have been a constant of the Iraqi insurgency as rebels attempt to intimidate Iraqis and thwart them from joining the fledgling government's security forces, whose growth and power are important to Iraq's future stability.
An Islamist Web site posted claims of responsibility for both of Tuesday's attacks by a group affiliated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Claims of responsibility by the group -- Unification and Jihad -- cannot be confirmed independently by CNN. The group has claimed responsibility for kidnappings and other terrorist attacks in Iraq.
The Baghdad bombing took place on a crowded road near Haifa Street, a dangerous stretch through central Baghdad dotted with markets, coffee shops and hair salons. The neighborhood has been plagued by fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents, earning a nickname from residents -- "Little Falluja." Falluja is a rebel stronghold city to the west of Baghdad that has been the scene of intense fighting.
Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman said a Toyota four-door sedan was used in the attack. Saad Alamili with Iraq's Ministry of Health said 47 were killed and 114 were wounded in the attack.
The carnage along the stretch sparked anger at the United States and Iraq for poor security. Upset crowds sifted through debris and cursed Americans.
One man cursed President Bush. Another cursed Americans, saying "it's an American-Israeli conspiracy."
Video outside the Karkh police administrative and recruitment center showed smoldering wreckage of seven or eight cars.
The same police station had come under mortar attack a couple of hours earlier. Of the four mortars fired toward the building, two landed in the courtyard behind it, one landed near the front gate and a fourth did not explode. No injuries were reported.
In Baquba two hours later, gunmen attacked a police minibus in a drive-by shooting, killing 12 officers and wounding three civilians, Iraqi authorities said.
Rahman said the minibus was filled with 18 police officers. The Health Ministry provided the death toll.
Iraq's charge d'affaires at the United Nations said attacks such as those Tuesday won't keep Iraq from staging a vote for a transitional national assembly in January.
"The terrorists are in a frenzy to delay elections," Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi said. "We will not give in to these intimidations."
Under a plan just instituted by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the families of Iraqi police officers killed in the line of duty will receive death benefits for life.
Capt. Steve Alvarez, a spokesman with the multinational security transition command, said the program, started Saturday, amounts to "direct dependent payment of 1 million Iraqi dinars (just over $700) upon death."
Also, it will "pay families the decedent's full salary until what would have been the officer's 63rd birthday."
The base salary for an unranked police officer is about $230 a month. A ranked police officer gets more, about $316 a month.
The program is retroactive to April 2003, when Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled.
U.S. commander: Gunship attack justified
Maj. Gen. Pete Chiarelli, commander of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, said the helicopter gunship attack that killed several people surrounding the wreckage of a U.S. armored vehicle Sunday was justified and that the helicopter's pilots were coming under fire at the time.
The crippled Bradley fighting vehicle was surrounded by terrorists and looters, Chiarelli said, who were threatening to steal sensitive communications equipment inside the vehicle and were attacking U.S. troops.
More than a dozen people were killed in the rocket attack, including a producer for the Arabic-language news network Al-Arabiya, whose death was captured on videotape.
Witnesses on the ground said there was no gunfire coming from the crowd that was surrounding the flaming vehicle, which had been crippled by a car bomb earlier in the day. But Chiarelli said his troops and helicopter pilots were under a great deal of gunfire.
"There was communications from our ground folks and our air folks that there was small-arms fire -- heavy small-arms fire, very well-aimed small-arms fire," Chiarelli said Tuesday during a briefing on the incident.
CNN's Diana Muriel, Octavia Nasr, Kevin Flower, Arwa Damon, Mohammad Tawfeek and Abbas al-Kazani contributed to this report.
U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq (news - web sites) concludes in a draft report due out soon.
According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.
Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.
As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.
After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction — its chief argument for going to war and overthrowing the regime.
An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so Thursday on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.
If the report is released publicly before the Nov. 2 elections, Democrats are likely to seize on the document as another opportunity to criticize the Bush administration's leading argument for war in Iraq and the deteriorating security situation there.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) has criticized the president's handling of the war, but also has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found there.
Duelfer's report is expected to be similar to findings reported by his predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October. Kay left the post in January, saying, "We were almost all wrong" about Saddam's weapons programs.
The new analysis, however, is expected to fall between the position of the Bush administration before the war — portraying Saddam as a grave threat — and the declarative statements Kay made after he resigned.
It will also add more evidence and flesh out Kay's October findings. At that time, Kay said the Iraq Survey Group had only uncovered limited evidence of secret chemical and biological weapons programs, but he found substantial evidence of an Iraqi push to boost the range of its ballistic missiles beyond prohibited ranges.
He also said there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way.
Duelfer's report doesn't reach firm conclusions in all areas. For instance, U.S. officials are still investigating whether Saddam's fallen regime may have sent chemical weapons equipment and several billion dollars over the border to Syria. That has not been confirmed, but remains an area of interest to the U.S. government.
The Duelfer report will come months after the Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing assessment of the prewar intelligence on Iraq.
After a yearlong inquiry, the Republican-led committee said in July the CIA (news - web sites) kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush (news - web sites) and Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) to make false statements.
The Iraq Survey Group has been working since the summer of 2003 to find Saddam's weapons and better understand his prohibited programs. More than a thousand civilian and military weapons specialists, translators and other experts have been devoted to the effort.
*
More Than 1,000 Military Deaths in Iraq
By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. military deaths in the Iraq (news - web sites) campaign passed 1,000 Tuesday, an Associated Press tally showed, as a spike in fighting with both Sunni and Shiite insurgents killed seven Americans in scattered clashes in the Baghdad area.
The count includes 998 U.S. troops and three civilian contractors killed while working for the Pentagon (news - web sites). The tally was compiled by the AP based on Pentagon records, AP reporting from Iraq, and reports from soldiers' families.
It includes deaths from hostile and non-hostile causes since President Bush (news - web sites) launched a campaign in March 2003 to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). A few deaths occurred in neighboring Kuwait.
The grim milestone was surpassed after a spike in clashes that has killed 14 American service members in the past two days. Two soldiers died in fighting Tuesday with militiamen loyal to rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Five other Americans died Tuesday in separate attacks, mostly in the Baghdad area.
Earlier Tuesday, during a news conference at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sought to play down the impact of the milestone, saying the "civilized world" had long passed the 1,000th death at the hands of terrorists.
The Bush administration has long linked the Iraq conflict to the war on terrorism. The Sept. 11 Commission concluded that Iraq and al-Qaida did not have a "collaborative relationship" before the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, and some have questioned to what extent foreign terror groups are involved in the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq.
Lucio Virzì
17-09-2004, 14:09
[OT] Ma Fabio che fine ha fatto? :confused:
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/17/international/middleeast/17CND-IRAQ.html?hp):
U.S. Airstrikes Said to Kill at Least 44 in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG
Published: September 17, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 17 — Iraqi health officials said American airstrikes that demolished homes late today in a village south of the volatile city of Falluja killed at least 44 people and wounded 27, including women and children.
Witnesses said the strikes began at around 10 p.m. at Zobaa, a village about 18 miles south of Falluja, and lasted for three hours. The bombardment destroyed almost a dozen homes, they said, and left scores of people buried beneath piles of rubble. Rescue efforts continued throughout the day.
The American military said its planes were aiming at insurgent strongholds, and that it might have killed as many as 60 fighters.
The Health Ministry said that of the people who were wounded, 17 were children and 8 were women. Two doctors at the main hospital in Falluja, Dr. Muthana Khodaiyar and Dr. Bilel Jasim, put the death toll at 56 and the number of wounded at 44.
A relentless spate of violence continued in central Baghdad, as a suicide bomber rammed a blue sedan packed with explosives into a police checkpoint on bustling Rashid Street. The blast killed at least 3 people and wounded at least 37, the Health Ministry said. It took place in the old city of Baghdad, an area thronged with thousands of shoppers at street markets on Friday, the Muslim day of rest.
The Iraqi police had parked seven squad cars by Shuhada Bridge, or Martyrs' Bridge, to check every vehicle going west across the Tigris River to the Haifa Street area, where American soldiers and Iraqi security forces were conducting raids on suspected insurgent hideouts.
At 12:20 p.m., the blue sedan sped down Rashid Street from the north, past a venerable book market, and swerved to the west, toward the bridge, police officers and other witnesses said. Police officers at the checkpoint yelled at the car to stop, but it kept going. It detonated at a traffic circle right before the bridge and in front of stores selling leather bags.
"I saw the guy," said Saleh al-Marwan, who was in the area shopping. "The police tried to stop him, and he didn't listen. When he got close to the checkpoint, he detonated himself."
Nouri Nahma, 38, a minibus driver, had just dropped off some stage actors at the Baghdad Folklore Museum by the bridge and was buying a prayer rug when the bomb exploded.
"As I was walking, I turned and saw a blue car swerving between the other cars," he said. "When the explosion happened, flesh went flying through the air and the car engine fell next to me, right beside the museum. We even found pieces of flesh inside the museum."
"Some of the cars were ablaze and some ambulances came to the scene and evacuated the wounded," he added.
The explosion incinerated or damaged the seven police cars parked at the checkpoint. An hour after the blast, glass and metal debris lay scattered across the area, and merchants had shut their shops. American soldiers in Humvees and Iraqi police officers pushed journalists back to a gold-painted statue of Mahrouf Abdul Gani Rusafi, a famous Iraqi poet.
The attack was the latest round in a bloody offensive begun on Sunday by insurgents that has left hundreds of Iraqis dead. Iraqi police officers and potential recruits appear to be the most vulnerable targets, their stations and posts the targets of car bombs, their families threatened. Foreign civilians are just as at risk — one British and two American engineers were kidnapped from their home on Thursday, and nothing has been heard of their condition or whereabouts.
"We only feel afraid of the terrorists," said Riad Haroub, a 34-year-old police officer standing in Medical City Hospital with a blood-splattered blue uniform. "They're the only threat to us."
Mr. Nahma, the minibus driver, said the violence was "indescribable."
"We can't find anyone who can provide us with security," he said. "We can't kick the occupation out of the country right now. We need them for security. These people who are calling themselves holy warriors or resistance, they're not."
But a bookseller and former Iraqi Army officer, Ziad Tarik, blamed the failures of the occupation for the ongoing bloodbath.
"Dissolving the Iraqi army is responsible for what happened today; I accuse Bremer," he said, referring to L. Paul Bremer III, who was the top American administrator in Iraq before the transfer of sovereignty in late June. "What happened today will happen every day."
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/17/opinion/17herbert.html?hp):
This Is Bush's Vietnam
By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 17, 2004
ARLINGTON, Va.
The rows of simple white headstones in the broad expanses of brilliant green lawns are scrupulously arranged, and they seem to go on and on, endlessly, in every direction.
It was impossible not to be moved. A soft September wind was the only sound. Beyond that was just the silence of history, and the collective memory of the lives lost in its service.
Nearly 300,000 people are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, which is just across the Potomac from Washington. On Tuesday morning I visited the grave of Air Force Second Lt. Richard VandeGeer. The headstone tells us, as simply as possible, that he went to Vietnam, that he was born Jan. 11, 1948, and died May 15, 1975, and that he was awarded the Purple Heart.
His mother, Diana VandeGeer, who is 75 now and lives in Florida, tells us that he loved to play soldier as a child, that he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and that she longs for him still. He would be 56 now, but to his mother he is forever a tall and handsome 27.
Richard VandeGeer was not the last American serviceman to die in the Vietnam War, but he was close enough. He was part of the last group of Americans killed, and his name was the last of the more than 58,000 to be listed on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. As I stood at his grave, I couldn't help but wonder how long it will take us to get to the last American combat death in Iraq.
Lieutenant VandeGeer died heroically. He was the pilot of a CH-53A transport helicopter that was part of an effort to rescue crew members of the Mayaguez, an American merchant ship that was captured by the Khmer Rouge off the coast of Cambodia on May 12, 1975. The helicopter was shot down and half of the 26 men aboard, including Lieutenant VandeGeer, perished.
(It was later learned that the crew of the Mayaguez had already been released.)
The failed rescue operation, considered the last combat activity of the Vietnam War, came four years after John Kerry's famous question, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Although he died bravely, Lieutenant VandeGeer's death was as senseless as those of the 58,000 who died before him in the fool's errand known as Vietnam. His remains were not recovered for 20 years - not until a joint operation by American and Cambodian authorities located the underwater helicopter wreckage in 1995. Positive identification, using the most advanced DNA technology, took another four years. Lieutenant VandeGeer was buried at Arlington in a private ceremony in 2000.
The Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation put me in touch with the lieutenant's family. "I'm still angry that my son is gone," said Mrs. VandeGeer, who is divorced and lives alone in Cocoa Beach. "I'm his mother. I think about him every day."
She said that while she will always be proud of her son, she believes he "died for nothing."
Lieutenant VandeGeer's sister, Michelle, told me she can't think about her brother without recalling that the last time she saw him was on her wedding day, in May 1974. "He looked so handsome and confident," she said. "He wanted to change the world."
Wars are all about chaos and catastrophes, death and suffering, and lifelong grief, which is why you should go to war only when it's absolutely unavoidable. Wars tear families apart as surely as they tear apart the flesh of those killed and wounded. Since we learned nothing from Vietnam, we are doomed to repeat its agony, this time in horrifying slow-motion in Iraq.
Three more marines were killed yesterday in Iraq. Kidnappings are commonplace. The insurgency is growing and becoming more sophisticated, which means more deadly. Ordinary Iraqis are becoming ever more enraged at the U.S.
When the newscaster David Brinkley, appalled by the carnage in Vietnam, asked Lyndon Johnson why he didn't just bring the troops home, Johnson replied, "I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war."
George W. Bush is now trapped as tightly in Iraq as Johnson was in Vietnam. The war is going badly. The president's own intelligence estimates are pessimistic. There is no plan to actually win the war in Iraq, and no willingness to concede defeat.
I wonder who the last man or woman will be to die for this colossal mistake.
http://landolove.com/random/foxrox.jpg
andreamarra
30-09-2004, 18:38
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Poi, mi sto chiedendo ancora come mai non abbiano provato a rovesciare Saddam con un colpo di stato, data la loro grande esperienze in questo tipo di attività, come hanno fatto in Iran, ad esempio...
:rolleyes:
Se non bombardi non distruggi, se non distruggi non ricostruisci, se non riscostruisci...
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html?oref=login&hp):
Skewed Intelligence Data in March to War in Iraq
By DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD
and JEFF GERTH
Published: October 3, 2004
This article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr. Barstow.
In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." President Bush, addressing the United Nations the next month, said there was "little doubt" about Mr. Hussein's appetite for nuclear arms.
The United States intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. But as the vice president told a group of Wyoming Republicans that September, the United States had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States.
The tubes quickly became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq. As the only physical evidence the United States of Mr. Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his advisers. The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, asserted on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
But before Ms. Rice made those remarks, she was aware that the government's foremost nuclear experts had concluded that the tubes were most likely not for nuclear weapons at all, an examination by The New York Times has found. As early as 2001, her staff had been told that these experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were probably intended for small artillery rockets, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and a senior administration official, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
"She was aware of the differences of opinion," the senior administration official said in an interview authorized by the White House. "She was also aware that at the highest level of the intelligence community, there was great confidence that these tubes were for centrifuges."
Ms. Rice's alarming description on CNN was in keeping with the Bush administration's overall treatment of the tubes. Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists, The Times found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of their own experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public.
The result was a largely one-sided presentation to the public that did not convey the depth of evidence and argument against the administration's most tangible proof of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq.
In response to questions last week about the tubes, administration officials emphasized two points: First, they said they relied on the repeated assurances of George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the tubes were in fact for centrifuges. Second, they noted that the intelligence community, including the Energy Department, largely agreed that Saddam Hussein had revived his nuclear program.
"We understood from intelligence briefings that the aluminum tubes were a part of the case" for nuclear reconstitution, Kevin Kellems, director of communications for Mr. Cheney, said in a written statement. But "there were a number of other important pieces of evidence." Furthermore, he said, the concerns about Mr. Hussein's nuclear capabilities "followed the tenor of the intelligence we had been hearing for some time."
It is not known when the president learned of the doubts that had been raised about the tubes. Sean McCormack, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said yesterday that the president relied on the intelligence community to assess the tubes' significance. "These judgments sometimes require members of the intelligence community to make tough assessments about competing interpretations of facts," Mr. McCormak said.
Mr. Tenet declined to be interviewed. But in a statement, he said he "made it clear" to the White House "that the case for a possible nuclear program in Iraq was weaker than that for chemical and biological weapons." Regarding the tubes, Mr. Tenet said "alternative views were shared" with the administration after the intelligence community drafted a new National Intelligence Estimate in late September 2002. But the estimate as a whole, particularly its sections on the tubes and Iraq's nuclear programs, has been largely discredited by the Senate Intelligence Committee. After a yearlong investigation, the committee unanimously concluded this summer that most of the estimate's findings about the tubes were either unsupported, overstated or incorrect. The panel devoted more than 50 pages to the tubes after learning that they were the C.I.A.'s "principal" reason for concluding that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
Today, 18 months after the invasion of Iraq, investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. The absence of unconventional weapons in Iraq is now widely seen as evidence of a profound intelligence failure, of an intelligence community blinded by "group think," false assumptions and unreliable human sources.
Yet the tale of the tubes, pieced together through records and interviews with senior intelligence officers, nuclear experts, administration officials and Congressional investigators, reveals a different failure.
Far from "group think," American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A "holy war" is how one Congressional investigator described it. That debate, which started in April 2001, produced two competing theories about the tubes. One, championed by the C.I.A., suggested a new nuclear menace. The other, advanced by the Energy Department, suggested a regime replenishing its rocket supply.
But in the months after 9/11, as the nation moved to war footing, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and even among Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions. That momentum gave urgency to the call for action against Iraq.
"We have a tendency - I don't know if it's part of the American character - to say, 'Well, we'll sit down and we'll evaluate the evidence, we'll draw a conclusion,' " Mr. Cheney said as he discussed the tubes on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" in September 2002.
"But we always think in terms that we've got all the evidence. Here, we don't have all the evidence," he said. "We have 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent. We don't know how much. We know we have a part of the picture. And that part of the picture tells us that he is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons."
Joe Raises the Tube Issue
Throughout the 1990's, United States intelligence agencies were deeply preoccupied with the status of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, and with good reason.
After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, arms inspectors discovered that Iraq had been far closer to building an atomic bomb than even the worst-case estimates had envisioned. And no one believed that Saddam Hussein had abandoned his nuclear ambitions. To the contrary, in one secret assessment after another, the agencies concluded that Iraq was conducting low-level theoretical research and quietly plotting to resume work on nuclear weapons.
But at the start of the Bush administration, the intelligence agencies also agreed that Iraq had not in fact resumed its nuclear weapons program. Iraq's nuclear infrastructure, they concluded, had been dismantled by sanctions and inspections. In short, Mr. Hussein's nuclear ambitions appear to have been contained.
Then Iraq started shopping for tubes.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the agencies learned in early 2001 of a plan by Iraq to buy 60,000 high-strength aluminum tubes from Hong Kong.
The tubes were made from 7075-T6 aluminum, an extremely hard alloy that made them potentially suitable as rotors in a uranium centrifuge. Properly designed, such tubes are strong enough to spin at the terrific speeds needed to convert uranium gas into enriched uranium, an essential ingredient of an atomic bomb. For this reason, international rules prohibited Iraq from importing certain sizes of 7075-T6 aluminum tubes; it was also why a new C.I.A. analyst named Joe quickly sounded the alarm.
At the C.I.A.'s request, The Times agreed to use only Joe's first name; the agency said publishing his full name could hinder his ability to operate overseas.
Joe graduated from the University of Kentucky in the late 1970's with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, then joined the Goodyear Atomic Corporation, which dispatched him to Oak Ridge, Tenn., a federal complex that specializes in uranium and national security research.
Joe went to work on a new generation of centrifuges. Many European models stood no more than 10 feet tall. The American centrifuges loomed 40 feet high, and Joe's job was to learn how to test and operate them. But when the project was canceled in 1985, Joe spent the next decade performing hazard analyses for nuclear reactors, gaseous diffusion plants and oil refineries.
In 1997, Joe transferred to a national security complex at Oak Ridge known as Y-12, his entry into intelligence work. His assignment was to track global sales of material used in nuclear arms. He retired after two years, taking a buyout with hundreds of others at Oak Ridge, and moved to the C.I.A.
The agency's ability to assess nuclear intelligence had markedly declined after the cold war, and Joe's appointment was part of an effort to regain lost expertise. He was assigned to a division eventually known as Winpac, for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control. Winpac had hundreds of employees, but only a dozen or so with a technical background in nuclear arms and fuel production. None had Joe's hands-on experience operating centrifuges.
Suddenly, Joe's work was ending up in classified intelligence reports being read in the White House. Indeed, his analysis was the primary basis for one of the agency's first reports on the tubes, which went to senior members of the Bush administration on April 10, 2001. The tubes, the report asserted, "have little use other than for a uranium enrichment program.''
This alarming assessment was immediately challenged by the Energy Department, which builds centrifuges and runs the government's nuclear weapons complex.
The next day, Energy Department officials ticked off a long list of reasons why the tubes did not appear well suited for centrifuges. Simply put, the analysis concluded that the tubes were the wrong size - too narrow, too heavy, too long - to be of much practical use in a centrifuge.
What was more, the analysis reasoned, if the tubes were part of a secret, high-risk venture to build a nuclear bomb, why were the Iraqis haggling over prices with suppliers all around the world? And why weren't they shopping for all the other sensitive equipment needed for centrifuges?
All fine questions. But if the tubes were not for a centrifuge, what were they for?
Within weeks, the Energy Department experts had an answer.
It turned out, they reported, that Iraq had for years used high-strength aluminum tubes to make combustion chambers for slim rockets fired from launcher pods. Back in 1996, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had even examined some of these tubes, also made of 7075-T6 aluminum, at a military complex, the Nasser metal fabrication plant in Baghdad, where the Iraqis acknowledged making rockets. According to the international agency, the rocket tubes, some 66,000 of them, were 900 millimeters in length, with a diameter of 81 millimeters and walls 3.3 millimeters thick.
The tubes now sought by Iraq had precisely the same dimensions - a perfect match.
This finding was published May 9, 2001, in the Daily Intelligence Highlight, a secret Energy Department newsletter published on Intelink, a Web site for the intelligence community and the White House.
Joe and his Winpac colleagues at the C.I.A. were not persuaded. Yes, they conceded, the tubes could be used as rocket casings. But this made no sense, they argued in a new report, because Iraq wanted tubes made at tolerances that "far exceed any known conventional weapons.'' In other words, Iraq was demanding a level of precision craftsmanship unnecessary for ordinary mass-produced rockets.
More to the point, these analysts had hit on a competing theory: that the tubes' dimensions matched those used in an early uranium centrifuge developed in the 1950's by a German scientist, Gernot Zippe. Most centrifuge designs are highly classified; this one, though, was readily available in science reports.
Thus, well before Sept. 11, 2001, the debate within the intelligence community was already neatly framed: Were the tubes for rockets or centrifuges?
Experts Attack Joe's Case
It was a simple question with enormous implications. If Mr. Hussein acquired nuclear weapons, American officials feared, he would wield them to menace the Middle East. So the tube question was critical, yet none too easy to answer. The United States had few spies in Iraq, and certainly none who knew Mr. Hussein's plans for the tubes.
But the tubes themselves could yield many secrets. A centrifuge is an intricate device. Not any old tube would do. Careful inquiry might answer the question.
The intelligence community embarked on an ambitious international operation to intercept the tubes before they could get to Iraq. The big break came in June 2001: a shipment was seized in Jordan.
At the Energy Department, those examining the tubes included scientists who had spent decades designing and working on centrifuges, and intelligence officers steeped in the tricky business of tracking the nuclear ambitions of America's enemies. They included Dr. Jon A. Kreykes, head of Oak Ridge's national security advanced technology group; Dr. Duane F. Starr, an expert on nuclear proliferation threats; and Dr. Edward Von Halle, a retired Oak Ridge nuclear expert. Dr. Houston G. Wood III, a professor of engineering at the University of Virginia who had helped design the 40-foot American centrifuge, advised the team and consulted with Dr. Zippe.
On questions about nuclear centrifuges, this was unambiguously the A-Team of the intelligence community, many experts say.
On Aug. 17, 2001, weeks before the twin towers fell, the team published a secret Technical Intelligence Note, a detailed analysis that laid out its doubts about the tubes' suitability for centrifuges.
First, in size and material, the tubes were very different from those Iraq had used in its centrifuge prototypes before the first gulf war. Those models used tubes that were nearly twice as wide and made of exotic materials that performed far better than aluminum. "Aluminum was a huge step backwards,'' Dr. Wood recalled.
In fact, the team could find no centrifuge machines "deployed in a production environment'' that used such narrow tubes. Their walls were three times too thick for "favorable use'' in a centrifuge, the team wrote. They were also anodized, meaning they had a special coating to protect them from weather. Anodized tubes, the team pointed out, are "not consistent'' with a uranium centrifuge because the coating can produce bad reactions with uranium gas.
In other words, if Joe and his Winpac colleagues were right, it meant that Iraq had chosen to forsake years of promising centrifuge work and instead start from scratch, with inferior material built to less-than-optimal dimensions.
The Energy Department experts did not think this made much sense. They concluded that using the tubes in centrifuges "is credible but unlikely, and a rocket production is the much more likely end use for these tubes.'' Similar conclusions were being reached by Britain's intelligence service and experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body.
Unlike Joe, experts at the international agency had worked with Zippe centrifuges, and they spent hours with him explaining why they believed his analysis was flawed. They pointed out errors in his calculations. They noted design discrepancies. They also sent reports challenging the centrifuge claim to American government experts through the embassy in Vienna, a senior official said.
Likewise, Britain's experts believed the tubes would need "substantial re-engineering'' to work in centrifuges, according to Britain's review of its prewar intelligence. Their experts found it "paradoxical'' that Iraq would order such finely crafted tubes only to radically rebuild each one for a centrifuge. Yes, it was theoretically possible, but as an Energy Department analyst later told Senate investigators, it was also theoretically possible to "turn your new Yugo into a Cadillac.''
In late 2001, intelligence analysts at the State Department also took issue with Joe's work in reports prepared for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Joe was "very convinced, but not very convincing," recalled Greg Thielmann, then director of strategic, proliferation and military affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
By year's end, Energy Department analysts published a classified report that even more firmly rejected the theory that the tubes could work as rotors in a 1950's Zippe centrifuge. These particular Zippe centrifuges, they noted, were especially ill suited for bomb making. They were a prototype designed for laboratory experiments, operating as single units. To produce enough enriched uranium to make just one bomb a year, Iraq would need up to 16,000 of them working in concert, a challenge for even the most sophisticated centrifuge plants.
Iraq had never made more than a dozen centrifuge prototypes. Half failed when rotors broke. Of the rest, one actually worked to enrich uranium, said Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who once ran Iraq's centrifuge program.
The Energy Department team concluded it was "unlikely that anyone'' could build a centrifuge site capable of producing significant amounts of enriched uranium "based on these tubes.'' One analyst summed it up this way: the tubes were so poorly suited for centrifuges, he told Senate investigators, that if Iraq truly wanted to use them this way, "we should just give them the tubes.''
Enter Cheney
In the months after Sept. 11, 2001, as the Bush administration devised a strategy to fight Al Qaeda, Vice President Dick Cheney immersed himself in the world of top-secret threat assessments. Bob Woodward, in his book "Plan of Attack,'' described Mr. Cheney as the administration's new "self-appointed special examiner of worst-case scenarios,'' and it was a role that fit.
Mr. Cheney had grappled with national security threats for three decades. He was on intimate terms with the intelligence community, a sprawling conglomeration of 15 spy agencies that frequently feuded over the meaning and significance of raw intelligence. He knew well their record of getting it wrong (the Bay of Pigs) and underestimating threats (Mr. Hussein's pre-1991 nuclear program) and failing to connect the dots (Sept. 11).
As a result, the vice president was not simply a passive recipient of intelligence analysis. He was known as a man who asked hard, skeptical questions, a man who paid attention to detail. "In my office I have a picture of John Adams, the first vice president,'' Mr. Cheney said in one of his first speeches as vice president. "Adams liked to say, 'The facts are stubborn things.' Whatever the issue, we are going to deal with facts and show a decent regard for other points of view."
With the Taliban routed in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, Mr. Cheney and his aides began to focus on intelligence assessments of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Cheney had long argued for more forceful action to topple Mr. Hussein. But in January 2002, according to Mr. Woodward's book, the C.I.A. told Mr. Cheney that Mr. Hussein could not be removed with covert action alone. His ouster, the agency said, would take an invasion, which would require building a convincing public case that Iraq posed a threat to the United States.
The evidence for that case was buried in classified intelligence files. Mr. Cheney and his aides began to meet repeatedly with analysts who specialized in Iraq and unconventional weapons. They wanted to know about any Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda and Baghdad's ability to make unconventional weapons.
"There's no question they had a point of view, but there was no attempt to get us to hew to a particular point of view ourselves, or to come to a certain conclusion,'' the deputy director of analysis at Winpac told the Senate Intelligence Committee. "It was trying to figure out, why do we come to this conclusion, what was the evidence. A lot of questions were asked, probing questions.''
Of all the worst-case possibilities, the most terrifying was the idea that Mr. Hussein might slip a nuclear weapon to terrorists, and Mr. Cheney and his staff zeroed in on Mr. Hussein's nuclear ambitions.
Mr. Cheney, for example, read a Feb. 12, 2002, report from the Defense Intelligence Agency about Iraq's reported attempts to buy 500 tons of yellowcake, a uranium concentrate, from Niger, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report. Many American intelligence analysts did not put much stock in the Niger report. Mr. Cheney promptly pressed for more information. At the same time, a senior intelligence official said, the agency was fielding repeated requests from Mr. Cheney's office for intelligence about the tubes, including updates on Iraq's continuing efforts to procure thousands more after the seizure in Jordan.
"Remember,'' Dr. David A. Kay, the chief American arms inspector after the war, said in an interview, "the tubes were the only piece of physical evidence about the Iraqi weapons programs that they had.''
In March 2002, Mr. Cheney traveled to Europe and the Middle East to build support for a confrontation with Iraq. It is not known whether he mentioned Niger or the tubes in his meetings. But on his return, he made it clear that he had repeatedly discussed Mr. Hussein and the nuclear threat.
"He is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time,'' Mr. Cheney asserted on CNN.
At the time, the C.I.A. had not reached so firm a conclusion. But on March 12, the day Mr. Cheney landed in the Middle East, he and other senior administration officials had been sent two C.I.A. reports about the tubes. Each cited the tubes as evidence that "Iraq currently may be trying to reconstitute its gas centrifuge program.''
Neither report, however, mentioned that leading centrifuge experts at the Energy Department strongly disagreed, according to Congressional officials who have read the reports.
What White House Is Told
As the Senate Intelligence Committee report made clear, the American intelligence community "is not a level playing field when it comes to the competition of ideas in intelligence analysis."
The C.I.A. has a distinct edge: "unique access to policymakers and unique control of intelligence reporting,'' the report found. The Presidential Daily Briefs, for example, are prepared and presented by agency analysts; the agency's director is the president's principal intelligence adviser. This allows agency analysts to control the presentation of information to policy makers "without having to explain dissenting views or defend their analysis from potential challenges,'' the committee's report said.
This problem, the report said, was "particularly evident'' with the C.I.A.'s analysis of the tubes, when agency analysts "lost objectivity and in several cases took action that improperly excluded useful expertise from the intelligence debate.'' In interviews, Senate investigators said the agency's written assessments did a poor job of describing the debate over the intelligence.
From April 2001 to September 2002, the agency wrote at least 15 reports on the tubes. Many were sent only to high-level policy makers, including President Bush, and did not circulate to other intelligence agencies. None have been released, though some were described in the Senate's 511-page report.
Several senior C.I.A. officials insisted that those reports did describe at least in general terms the intelligence debate. "You don't go into all that detail but you do try to evince it when you write your current product,'' one agency official said.
But several Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate.
Over and over, the reports restated Joe's main conclusions for the C.I.A. - that the tubes matched the 1950's Zippe centrifuge design and were built to specifications that "exceeded any known conventional weapons application.''
They did not state what Energy Department experts had noted - that many common industrial items, even aluminum cans, were made to specifications as good or better than the tubes sought by Iraq. Nor did the reports acknowledge a significant error in Joe's claim - that the tubes "matched'' those used in a Zippe centrifuge.
The tubes sought by Iraq had a wall thickness of 3.3 millimeters. When Energy Department experts checked directly with Dr. Zippe, a step Joe did not take, they learned that the walls of Zippe tubes did not exceed 1.1 millimeters, a very substantial difference.
"They never lay out the other case,'' one Congressional official said of these C.I.A.'s assessments.
The Senate report provides only a partial picture of the agency's communications with the White House. In an arrangement endorsed by both parties, the Intelligence Committee agreed to delay an examination of whether White House descriptions of Iraq's military capabilities were "substantiated by intelligence information." As a result, Senate investigators were not permitted to interview White House officials about what they knew of the tubes debate and when they knew it.
But in interviews, C.I.A. and administration officials disclosed that the dissenting views were repeatedly discussed in meetings and telephone calls.
One senior official at the agency said its "fundamental approach'' was to tell policy makers about dissenting views. Another senior official acknowledged that some of their agency's reports "weren't as well caveated as, in retrospect, they should have been.'' But he added, "There was certainly nothing that was hidden.''
Four agency officials insisted that Winpac analysts repeatedly explained the contrasting assessments during briefings with senior National Security Council officials who dealt with nuclear proliferation issues. "We think we were reasonably clear about this,'' a senior C.I.A. official said.
A senior administration official confirmed that Winpac was indeed candid about the differing views. The official, who recalled at least a half dozen C.I.A. briefings on tubes, said he knew by late 2001 that there were differing views on the tubes. "To the best of my knowledge, he never hid anything from me,'' the official said of his counterpart at Winpac.
This official said he also spoke at least once to senior officials at the Department of Energy about the tubes, and a spokeswoman for the department said in a written statement that the agency "strongly conveyed its viewpoint to senior policy makers.''
But if senior White House officials understood the department's main arguments against the tubes, they also took into account its caveats. "As far as I know,'' the senior administration official said, "D.O.E. never concluded that these tubes could not be used for centrifuges.''
A Referee Is Ignored
Over the summer of 2002, the White House secretly refined plans to invade Iraq and debated whether to seek more United Nations inspections. At the same time, in response to a White House request in May, C.I.A. officials were quietly working on a report that would lay out for the public declassified evidence of Iraq's reported unconventional weapons and ties to terror groups.
That same summer the tubes debate continued to rage. The primary antagonists were the C.I.A. and the Energy Department, with other intelligence agencies drawn in on either side. But it was also intensely personal, several participants recalled in interviews.
Much of the strife centered on Joe. At first glance, he seemed an unlikely target. He held a relatively junior position, and according to the C.I.A. he did not write the vast majority of the agency's reports on the tubes. He has never met Mr. Cheney. His one trip to the White House was to take his family on the public tour.
But he was, as one staff member on the Senate Intelligence Committee put it, "the ringleader'' of a small group of Winpac analysts who were convinced that the tubes were destined for centrifuges. His views carried special force within the agency because he was the only Winpac analyst with experience operating uranium centrifuges. In meetings with other intelligence agencies, he often took the lead in arguing the technical basis for the agency's conclusions.
"Very few people have the technical knowledge to independently arrive at the conclusion he did,'' said Dr. Kay, the weapons inspector, when asked to explain Joe's influence.
Without naming him, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report repeatedly questioned Joe's competence and integrity. It portrayed him as so determined to prove his theory that he twisted test results, ignored factual discrepancies and excluded dissenting views.
The Senate report, for example, challenged his decision not to consult Energy Department experts on spin tests designed to see if the tubes were strong enough for centrifuges. Asked why he did not seek their help, Joe told the committee: "Because we funded it. It was our testing. We were trying to prove some things that we wanted to prove with the testing.'' The Senate report singled out this comment for special criticism, saying, "The committee believes that such an effort should never have been intended to prove what the C.I.A. wanted to prove.''
Joe's superiors strongly defend his work and say his words were taken out of context. They describe him as diligent and professional, an open-minded analyst willing to go the extra mile to test his theories. "Part of the job of being an analyst is to evaluate alternative hypotheses and possibilities, to build a case, think of alternatives,'' a senior agency official said. "That's what Joe did in this case. If he turned out to be wrong, that's not an offense. He was expected to be wrong occasionally.''
Still, the bureaucratic infighting was now so widely known that even the Australian government was aware of it. "U.S. agencies differ on whether aluminum tubes, a dual-use item sought by Iraq, were meant for gas centrifuges,'' Australia's intelligence services wrote in a July 2002 assessment. The same report said that the tubes evidence was "patchy and inconclusive.''
There was a mechanism, however, to resolve the dispute. It was called the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, a secret body of experts drawn from across the federal government. For a half century, Jaeic (pronounced jake) has been called on to resolve disputes and give authoritative assessments about nuclear intelligence. The committee had specifically assessed the Iraqi nuclear threat in 1989, 1997 and 1999. An Energy Department expert was the committee's chairman in 2002, and some department officials say the C.I.A. opposed calling in Jaeic to mediate the tubes fight.
Not so, agency officials said. In July 2002, they insist, they were the first intelligence agency to seek Jaeic's intervention. "I personally was concerned about the extent of the community's disagreement on this and the fact that we weren't getting very far,'' a senior agency official recalled.
The committee held a formal session in early August to discuss the debate, with more than a dozen experts on both sides in attendance. A second meeting was scheduled for later in August but was postponed. A third meeting was set for early September; it never happened either.
"We were O.B.E. - overcome by events,'' an official involved in the proceedings recalled.
White House Makes a Move
"The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid appraisal of the facts," Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002, at the outset of an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Nashville.
Warning against "wishful thinking or willful blindness,'' Mr. Cheney used the speech to lay out a rationale for pre-emptive action against Iraq. Simply resuming United Nations inspections, he argued, could give "false comfort" that Mr. Hussein was contained.
"We now know Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,'' he declared, words that quickly made headlines worldwide. "Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge. Intelligence is an uncertain business, even in the best of circumstances.''
But the world, Mr. Cheney warned, could ill afford to once again underestimate Iraq's progress.
"Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."
A week later President Bush announced that he would ask Congress for authorization to oust Mr. Hussein. He also met that day with senior members of the House and Senate, some of whom expressed concern that the administration had yet to show the American people tangible evidence of an imminent threat. The fact that Mr. Hussein gassed his own people in the 1980's, they argued, was not sufficient evidence of a threat to the United States in 2002. New intelligence was needed, lawmakers in both parties warned.
President Bush got the message. He directed Mr. Cheney to give the public and Congress a more complete picture of the latest intelligence on Iraq.
In his Nashville speech, Mr. Cheney had not mentioned the aluminum tubes or any other fresh intelligence when he said, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.'' The one specific source he did cite was Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Mr. Hussein's who defected in 1994 after running Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. But Mr. Majid told American intelligence officials in 1995 that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled. What's more, Mr. Majid could not have had any insight into Mr. Hussein's current nuclear activities: he was assassinated in 1996 on his return to Iraq.
The day after President Bush announced he was seeking Congressional authorization, Mr. Cheney and George J. Tenet, director of the C.I.A., traveled to Capitol Hill to brief the four top Congressional leaders. After the 90-minute session, J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, told Fox News that Mr. Cheney had provided new information about unconventional weapons, and Fox went on to report that one source said the new intelligence described "just how dangerously close Saddam Hussein has come to developing a nuclear bomb."
Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat and Senate majority leader, was more cautious. "What has changed over the course of the last 10 years, that brings this country to the belief that it has to act in a pre-emptive fashion in invading Iraq?'' he asked.
A few days later, on Sept. 8., the lead article on Page 1 of The New York Times gave the first detailed account of the aluminum tubes. The article cited unnamed senior administration officials who insisted that the dimensions, specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they were intended for a nuclear weapons program.
"The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical and biological weapons, '' a senior administration official was quoted as saying. "Nuclear weapons are his hole card.''
The article gave no hint of a debate over the tubes.
The White House did much to increase the impact of The Times' article. The morning the article was published, Mr. Cheney went on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" and confirmed when asked that the tubes were the most alarming evidence behind the administration's view that Iraq had resumed its nuclear weapons program. The tubes, he said, had "raised our level of concern.'' Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, went on CNN the same day and said the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.''
Neither official mentioned that the nation's top nuclear design experts believed overwhelmingly that the tubes were poorly suited for centrifuges.
Mr. Cheney, who has a history of criticizing officials who disclose classified information, typically refuses to comment when asked about secret intelligence. Yet on this day, with a Gallup poll showing that 58 percent of Americans did not believe President Bush had done enough to explain why the United States should act against Iraq, Mr. Cheney spoke openly about one of the closest held secrets regarding Iraq. Not only did Mr. Cheney draw attention to the tubes; he did so with a certitude that could not be found in even the C.I.A.'s assessments. On "Meet the Press," Mr. Cheney said he knew "for sure'' and "in fact'' and "with absolute certainty'' that Mr. Hussein was buying equipment to build a nuclear weapon.
"He has reconstituted his nuclear program,'' Mr. Cheney said flatly.
But in the C.I.A. reports, evidence "suggested'' or "could mean'' or "indicates" - a word used widely in a report issued just weeks earlier. Little if anything was asserted with absolute certainty. The intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq had indeed reconstituted its nuclear program.
Mr. Kellems, Mr. Cheney's spokesman, said, "The vice president's public statements have reflected the evolving judgment of the intelligence community."
The C.I.A. routinely checks presidential speeches that draw on intelligence reports. This is how intelligence professionals pull politicians back from factual errors. One such opportunity came soon after Mr. Cheney's appearance on "Meet the Press." On Sept. 11, 2002, the White House asked the agency to clear for possible presidential use a passage on Iraq's nuclear program. The passage included this sentence: "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.''
The agency did not ask speechwriters to make clear that centrifuges were but one possible use, that intelligence experts were divided and that the tubes also matched those used in Iraqi rockets. In fact, according to the Senate's investigation, the agency suggested no changes at all.
The next day President Bush used virtually identical language when he cited the aluminum tubes in an address to the United Nations General Assembly.
Dissent, but to Little Effect
The administration's talk of clandestine centrifuges, nuclear blackmail and mushroom clouds had a powerful political effect, particularly on senators who were facing fall election campaigns. "When you hear about nuclear weapons, this is the national security knock-out punch,'' said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who sits on the Intelligence Committee and ultimately voted against authorizing war.
Even so, it did not take long for questions to surface over the administration's claims about Mr. Hussein's nuclear capabilities. As it happened, Senator Dianne Feinstein, another Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, had visited the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in August 2002. Officials there, she later recalled, told her they saw no signs of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq.
At that point, the tubes debate was in its 16th month. Yet Mr. Tenet, of the C.I.A., the man most responsible for briefing President Bush on intelligence, told the committee that he was unaware until that September of the profound disagreement over a critical piece of evidence that Mr. Bush was citing to world leaders as justification for war.
Even now, committee members from both parties express baffled anger at this possibility. How could he not know? "I don't even understand it,'' Olympia Snowe, a Republican senator from Maine, said in an interview. "I cannot comprehend the failures in judgment or breakdowns in communication.''
Mr. Tenet told Senate investigators that he did not expect to learn of dissenting opinions "until the issue gets joined'' at the highest levels of the intelligence community. But if Mr. Tenet's lack of knowledge meant the president was given incomplete information about the tubes, there was still plenty of time for the White House to become fully informed.
Yet so far, Senate investigators say, they have found little evidence the White House tried to find out why so many experts disputed the C.I.A. tubes theory. If anything, administration officials minimized the divide.
On Sept. 13, The Times made the first public mention of the tubes debate in the sixth paragraph of an article on Page A13. In it an unnamed senior administration official dismissed the debate as a "footnote, not a split.'' Citing another unnamed administration official, the story reported that the "best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the C.I.A. assessments.''
As a senior Oak Ridge official pointed out to the Intelligence Committee, "the vast majority of scientists and nuclear experts'' in the Energy Department's laboratories in fact disagreed with the agency. But on Sept. 13, the day the article appeared, the Energy Department sent a directive forbidding employees from discussing the subject with reporters.
The Energy Department, in a written statement, said that it was "completely appropriate'' to remind employees of the need to protect nuclear secrets and that it had made no effort "to quash dissent.''
In closed hearings that month, though, Congress began to hear testimony about the debate. Several Democrats said in interviews that secrecy rules had prevented them from speaking out about the gap between the administration's view of the tubes and the more benign explanations described in classified testimony.
One senior C.I.A. official recalled cautioning members of Congress in a closed session not to speak publicly about the possibility that the tubes were for rockets. "If people start talking about that and the Iraqis see that people are saying rocket bodies, that will automatically become their explanation whenever anyone goes to Iraq,'' the official said in an interview.
So while administration officials spoke freely about the agency's theory, the evidence that best challenged this view remained almost entirely off limits for public debate.
In late September, the C.I.A. sent policymakers its most detailed classified report on the tubes. For the first time, an agency report acknowledged that "some in the intelligence community'' believed rockets were "more likely end uses'' for the tubes, according to officials who have seen the report.
Meanwhile, at the Energy Department, scientists were startled to find senior White House officials embracing a view of the tubes they considered thoroughly discredited. "I was really shocked in 2002 when I saw it was still there,'' Dr. Wood said of the centrifuge claim. "I thought it had been put to bed.''
Members of the Energy Department team took a highly unusual step: They began working quietly with a Washington arms-control group, the Institute for Science and International Security, to help the group inform the public about the debate, one team member and the group's president, David Albright, said.
On Sept. 23, the institute issued the first in series of lengthy reports that repeated some of the Energy Department's arguments against the C.I.A. analysis, though none of the classified ones. Still, after more than 16 months of secret debate, it was the first public airing of facts that undermined the most alarming suggestions about Iraq's nuclear threat.
The reports got little attention, partly because reporters did not realize they had been done with the cooperation of top Energy Department experts. The Washington Post ran a brief article about the findings on Page A18. Many major newspapers, including The Times, ran nothing at all.
Scrambling for an 'Estimate'
Soon after Mr. Cheney's appearance on "Meet the Press," Democratic senators began pressing for a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, terrorism and unconventional weapons. A National Intelligence Estimate is a classified document that is supposed to reflect the combined judgment of the entire intelligence community. The last such estimate on Iraq had been done in 2000.
Most estimates take months to complete. But this one had to be done in days, in time for an October vote on a war resolution. There was little time for review or reflection, and no time for Jaeic, the joint committee, to reconcile deep analytical differences.
This was a potentially thorny obstacle for those writing the nuclear section: What do you do when the nation's nuclear experts strongly doubt the linchpin evidence behind the C.I.A.'s claims that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program?
The Energy Department helped solve the problem. In meetings on the estimate, senior department intelligence officials said that while they still did not believe the tubes were for centrifuges, they nonetheless could agree that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons capability.
Several senior scientists inside the department said they were stunned by this stance; they saw no compelling evidence of a revived nuclear program. Some laboratory officials blamed time pressure and inexperience. Thomas S. Ryder, the department's representative at the meetings, had been acting director of the department's intelligence unit for only five months. "A heck of a nice guy but not savvy on technical issues,'' is the way one senior nuclear official described Mr. Ryder, who declined comment. Mr. Ryder's position was more alarming than prior assessments from the Energy Department. In an August 2001 intelligence paper, department analysts warned of suspicious activities in Iraq that "could be preliminary steps'' toward reviving a centrifuge program. In July 2002 an Energy Department report, "Nuclear Reconstitution Efforts Underway?", noted that several developments, including Iraq's suspected bid to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, suggested Baghdad was "seeking to reconstitute" a nuclear weapons program.
According to intelligence officials who took part in the meetings, Mr. Ryder justified his department's now firm position on nuclear reconstitution in large part by citing the Niger reports. Many C.I.A. analysts considered that intelligence suspect; analysts at the State Department labeled the reports dubious.
Nevertheless, the estimate's authors seized on the Energy Department's position to avoid the entire tubes debate, which was now relegated to a 10-page annex. The estimate would instead emphasize that the C.I.A. and the Energy Department both agreed that Mr. Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. Only the closest reader would see that each agency was basing its assessment in large measure on evidence the other considered suspect.
On Oct. 2, a mere nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution, the new National Intelligence Estimate was delivered to the Intelligence Committee. The most significant change from past Iraq estimates dealt with nuclear weapons; the new estimate agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was in aggressive pursuit of the atomic bomb.
Today, the Intelligence Committee's report makes clear, that estimate stands as one of the most flawed documents in the history of American intelligence. The committee concluded unanimously that almost every major finding in the estimate was wrong, unfounded or overblown.
This was especially true of the nuclear section.
Estimates express their most important findings with high, moderate or low confidence levels. This one claimed "moderate confidence'' on how fast Iraq could have a bomb, but "high confidence'' that Baghdad was rebuilding its nuclear program. And the tubes were the leading and most detailed evidence cited.
According to the committee, the passages on the tubes, which adopted much of the C.I.A. analysis, were misleading and riddled with factual errors. The estimate, for example, included a chart intended to show that the dimensions of the tubes closely matched a Zippe centrifuge. Yet the chart omitted the dimensions of Iraq's 81-millimeter rocket, which precisely matched the tubes.
The estimate cited Iraq's alleged willingness to pay top dollar for the tubes, up to $17.50 each, as evidence they were for secret centrifuges. But Defense Department rocket engineers told Senate investigators that 7075-T6 aluminum is "the material of choice for low-cost rocket systems.''
The estimate also asserted that 7075-T6 tubes were "poor choices'' for rockets. In fact, similar tubes were used in rockets from several countries, including the United States, and in an Italian rocket, the Medusa, which Iraq had copied.
Beyond tubes, the estimate cited several other "key judgments'' that supported its assessment. The committee found this intelligence just as flawed.
The estimate, for example, pointed to Iraq's purchases of magnets, balancing machines and machine tools, all of which could be used in a nuclear program. But each item also had legitimate non-nuclear uses, and there was no credible intelligence whatsoever showing they were for a nuclear program.
The estimate said Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission was building new production facilities for nuclear weapons. The Senate found this claim was based on a single operative's report, which described how the commission had constructed one headquarters building and planned "a new high-level polytechnic school.''
Finally, the estimate stated that many nuclear scientists had been reassigned to the A.E.C. The Senate found nothing to back this conclusion. It did, though, discover a 2001 report in which a commission employee complained that Iraq's nuclear program "had been stalled since the gulf war.''
Such "key judgments'' are supposed to reflect the very best American intelligence. (The Niger intelligence, for example, was considered too shaky to be included as a key judgment.) Yet as they studied raw intelligence reports, those involved in the Senate investigation came to a sickening realization. "We kept looking at the intelligence and saying, 'My God, there's nothing here,' '' one official recalled.
The Vote for War
Soon after the National Intelligence Estimate was completed, Mr. Bush delivered a speech in Cincinnati in which he described the "grave threat'' that Iraq and its "arsenal of terror'' posed to the United States. He dwelled longest on nuclear weapons, reviewing much of the evidence outlined in the estimate. The C.I.A. had warned him away from mentioning Niger.
"Facing clear evidence of peril,'' the president concluded, "we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.''
Four days later, on Oct. 11, the Senate voted 77-23 to give Mr. Bush broad authority to invade Iraq. The resolution stated that Iraq posed "a continuing threat'' to the United States by, among other things, "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.''
Many senators who voted for the resolution emphasized the nuclear threat.
"The great danger is a nuclear one,'' Senator Feinstein, the California Democrat, said on the Senate floor.
But Senator Bob Graham, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said he voted against the resolution in part because of doubts about the tubes. "It reinforced in my mind pre-existing questions I had about the unreliability of the intelligence community, especially the C.I.A.,'' Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, said in an interview.
At the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, Senator John Kerry pledged that should he be elected president, "I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence.'' But in October 2002, when the Senate voted on Iraq, Mr. Kerry had not read the National Intelligence Estimate, but instead had relied on a briefing from Mr. Tenet, a spokeswoman said. "According to the C.I.A.'s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons,'' Mr. Kerry said then, explaining his vote. "There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons."
The report cited by Mr. Kerry, an unclassified white paper, said nothing about the tubes debate except that "some'' intelligence analysts believed that the tubes were "probably intended'' for conventional weapons.
Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, served on the Intelligence Committee, which gave him ample opportunity to ask hard questions. But in voting to authorize war, Mr. Edwards expressed no uncertainty about the principle evidence of Mr. Hussein's alleged nuclear program.
"We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons,'' Mr. Edwards said then.
On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq submitted a 12,200-page declaration about unconventional arms to the United Nations that made no mention of the tubes. Soon after, Winpac analysts at the C.I.A. assessed the declaration for President Bush. The analysts criticized Iraq for failing to acknowledge or explain why it sought tubes "we believe suitable for use in a gas centrifuge uranium effort.'' Nor, they said, did it "acknowledge efforts to procure uranium from Niger.''
Neither Energy Department nor State Department intelligence experts were given a chance to review the Winpac assessment, prompting complaints that dissenting views were being withheld from policy makers.
"It is most disturbing that Winpac is essentially directing foreign policy in this matter,'' one Energy Department official wrote in an e-mail message. "There are some very strong points to be made in respect to Iraq's arrogant noncompliance with U.N. sanctions. However, when individuals attempt to convert those 'strong statements' into the 'knock out' punch, the Administration will ultimately look foolish - i.e., the tubes and Niger!''
The U.N. Inspectors Return
For nearly two years Western intelligence analysts had been trying to divine from afar Iraq's plans for the tubes. At the end of 2002, with the resumption of United Nations arms inspections, it became possible to seek answers inside Iraq. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency immediately zeroed in on the tubes.
The team quickly arranged a field trip to the Nasser metal fabrication factory, where they found 13,000 completed rockets, all produced from 7075-T6 aluminum tubes. The Iraqi rocket engineers explained that they had been shopping for more tubes because their supply was running low.
Why order tubes with such tight tolerances? An Iraqi engineer said they wanted to improve the rocket's accuracy without making major design changes. Design documents and procurement records confirmed his account.
The inspectors solved another mystery. The tubes intercepted in Jordan had been anodized, given a protective coating. The Iraqis had a simple explanation: they wanted the new tubes protected from the elements. Sure enough, the inspectors found that many thousands of the older tubes, which had no special coating, were corroded and useless because they had been stored outside.
The inspectors found no trace of a clandestine centrifuge program. On Jan. 10, 2003, The Times reported that the international agency was challenging "the key piece of evidence'' behind "the primary rationale for going to war.'' The article also reported that officials at the Energy Department and State Department had suggested the tubes might be for rockets.
The C.I.A. theory was in trouble, and senior members of the Bush administration seemed to know it.
Also that January, White House officials who were drafting what would become Secretary Powell's speech to the Security Council sent word to the intelligence community that they believed "the nuclear case was weak,'' the Senate report said. In an interview, a senior administration official said it was widely understood all along at the White House that the evidence of a nuclear threat was piecemeal and weaker than that for other unconventional arms.
But rather than withdraw the nuclear card - a step that could have undermined United States credibility just as tens of thousands of troops were being airlifted to the region - the White House cast about for new arguments and evidence to support it.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked the intelligence agencies for more evidence beyond the tubes to bolster the nuclear case. Winpac analysts redoubled efforts to prove that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Africa. Rocket engineers at the Defense Department were approached by C.I.A. analysts and asked to compare the Iraqi tubes with those used in American rockets. The engineers told the analysts that the tubes "were perfectly usable for rockets.'' The agency analysts did not appear pleased. One rocket engineer complained to Senate investigators that the analysts had "an agenda'' and were trying "to bias us'' into agreeing that the Iraqi tubes were not fit for rockets. In interviews, agency officials denied any such effort.
According to the Intelligence Committee report, the agency also sought to undermine the I.A.E.A.'s work with secret intelligence assessments distributed only to senior policy makers. Nonetheless, on Jan. 22, in a meeting first reported by The Washington Post, the ubiquitous Joe flew to Vienna in a last-ditch attempt to bring the international experts around to his point of view.
The session was a disaster.
"Everybody was embarrassed when he came and made this presentation, embarrassed and disgusted,'' one participant said. "We were going insane, thinking, 'Where is he coming from?' ''
On Jan. 27, the international agency rendered its judgment: it told the Security Council that it had found no evidence of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq. "From our analysis to date,'' the agency reported, "it appears that the aluminum tubes would be consistent with the purpose stated by Iraq and, unless modified, would not be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges.''
The Powell Presentation
The next night, during his State of the Union address, President Bush cited I.A.E.A. findings from years past that confirmed that Mr. Hussein had had an "advanced'' nuclear weapons program in the 1990's. He did not mention the agency's finding from the day before.
He did, though, repeat the claim that Mr. Hussein was trying to buy tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' Mr. Bush also cited British intelligence that Mr. Hussein had recently sought "significant quantities'' of uranium from Africa - a reference in 16 words that the White House later said should have been stricken, though the British government now insists the information was credible.
"Saddam Hussein,'' Mr. Bush said that night, "has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide. The dictator of Iraq is not disarming.''
A senior administration official involved in vetting the address said Mr. Bush did not cite the I.A.E.A. conclusion of Jan. 27 because the White House believed the agency was analyzing old Iraqi tubes, not the newer ones seized in Jordan. But a senior official at the agency and a senior American intelligence official each said the international group's analysis covered both types of tubes.
The senior administration official also said the president's words were carefully chosen to reflect the doubts at the Energy Department. The crucial phrase was "suitable for nuclear weapons production.'' The phrase stopped short of asserting that the tubes were actually being used in centrifuges. And it was accurate in the sense that Energy Department officials always left open the possibility that the tubes could be modified for use in a centrifuge.
"There were differences,'' the official said, "and we had to address those differences.''
In his address, the president announced that Mr. Powell would go before the Security Council on Feb. 5 and lay out the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. The purpose was to win international backing for an invasion, and so the administration spent weeks drafting and redrafting the presentation, with heavy input from the C.I.A., the National Security Council and I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff.
According to the Intelligence Committee, some drafts prepared for Mr. Powell contained language on the tubes that was patently incorrect. The C.I.A. wanted Mr. Powell to say, for example, that Iraq's specifications for roundness were so exacting "that the tubes would be rejected as defective if I rolled one under my hand on this table, because the mere pressure of my hand would deform it.''
Intelligence analysts at the State Department waged a quiet battle against much of the proposed language on tubes. A year before, they had sent Mr. Powell a report explaining why they believed the tubes were more likely for rockets. The National Intelligence Estimate included their dissent - that they saw no compelling evidence of a comprehensive effort to revive a nuclear weapons program. Now, in the days before the Security Council speech, they sent the secretary detailed memos warning him away from a long list of assertions in the drafts, the Intelligence Committee found. The language on the tubes, they said, contained "egregious errors'' and "highly misleading'' claims. Changes were made, language softened. The line about "the mere pressure of my hand,'' for instance, was removed.
"My colleagues,'' Mr. Powell assured the Security Council, "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions.''
He made his way to the subject of Mr. Hussein's current nuclear capabilities.
"By now,'' he said, "just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts and the Iraqis themselves argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.''
But Mr. Powell did not acknowledge that those "other experts'' included many of the nation's most authoritative nuclear experts, some of whom said in interviews that they were offended to find themselves now lumped in with a reviled government.
In making the case that the tubes were for centrifuges, Mr. Powell made claims that his own intelligence experts had told him were not accurate. Mr. Powell, for example, asserted to the Security Council that the tubes were manufactured to a tolerance "that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets."
Yet in a memo written two days earlier, Mr. Powell's intelligence experts had specifically cautioned him about those very same words. "In fact,'' they explained, "the most comparable U.S. system is a tactical rocket - the U.S. Mark 66 air-launched 70-millimeter rocket - that uses the same, high-grade (7075-T6) aluminum, and that has specifications with similar tolerances.''
In the end, Mr. Powell put his personal prestige and reputation behind the C.I.A.'s tube theory.
"When we came to the aluminum tubes," Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said in an interview, "the secretary listened to the discussion of the various views among intelligence agencies, and reflected those issues in his presentation. Since his task at the U.N. was to present the views of the United States, he went with the overall judgment of the intelligence community as reflected by the director of central intelligence."
As Mr. Powell summed it up for the United Nations, "People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind these illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program: the ability to produce fissile material."
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/politics/05rumsfeld.html?oref=login):
Rumsfeld Sees Lack of Proof for Qaeda-Hussein Link
By THOM SHANKER
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he had seen no "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, although he tempered his comment by noting that stark disagreements on that issue remained among American intelligence analysts.
"I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over the period of a year in the most amazing way," Mr. Rumsfeld said when asked about ties between Mr. Hussein and the terror network run by Osama bin Laden. Senior administration officials cited the existence of ties between them as a rationale for war on Iraq.
"Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was," Mr. Rumsfeld said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."
Relationships among terrorists and terrorist networks are complicated to track, Mr. Rumsfeld said, because "in many cases, they cooperate not in a chain of command but in a loose affiliation, a franchising arrangement almost."
He said that even Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist leader blamed for some of the most violent attacks inside Iraq since the end of major combat operations, probably had no formal allegiance to Mr. bin Laden, although "they're just two peas in a pod in terms of what they're doing."
The extent of Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda has been subjected to intense and often contentious scrutiny, especially this campaign season. While Mr. Rumsfeld often has cited C.I.A. reports of murky ties, including the presence of Qaeda operatives in Iraq, he has not been as adamant on the issue as other senior administration officials, in particular Vice President Dick Cheney.
"There is no question but that there have been interactions between the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives," Mr. Rumsfeld said in November 2002. "They have occurred over a span of some 8 or 10 years to our knowledge. There are currently Al Qaeda in Iraq.''
But even when discussing intelligence pointing to Iraq- Qaeda links, he has noted the absence of certainty. In September 2002, he warned that it was not always possible for the government to satisfy a public desire for "some hard evidence" of Iraq's ties to terrorist networks. "We have to face that fact that we're not going to have everything beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.
Mr. Rumsfeld's comments were made one day before Mr. Cheney is to meet Senator John Edwards in a vice-presidential campaign debate, during which the topic of administration statements on Iraq-Qaeda ties are likely to come up.
Mr. Rumsfeld issued a statement late last night in which he stated, "I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq."
That assessment, he said in the statement, was based on points provided by George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, to describe the C.I.A.'s understanding of the Qaeda-Iraq relationship. Those points, Mr. Rumsfeld said, included evidence of Qaeda members in Iraq, reports of senior-level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade and of possible chemical and biological agent training, and of information that Iraq and Al Qaeda discussed safe haven opportunities in Iraq.
In his speech yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld praised a weekend offensive by the First Infantry Division and members of the new Iraqi security force that chased insurgents from Samarra. He said the offensive should serve as a warning to other guerrillas holding territory before elections scheduled for January.
In the face of a tenacious insurgency, he said, "your first choice is to talk and to gather people together.
"And that's what they tried in some areas, and it worked, and in some areas it didn't," he added. "And the next thing you have to do is have the threat of force. And finally you may have to use force. And that's what happened in Samarra."
Mr. Rumsfeld also gave an impassioned defense of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan for his actions in support of the military effort to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and for serving as a voice of moderation in the Muslim world.
Da CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/iraq.wmd.report.ap/index.html):
Official: No WMD stockpiles in Iraq
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector reported Wednesday that he found no evidence that Iraq produced any weapons of mass destruction after 1991. He also concluded that Saddam Hussein's weapons capability weakened during a dozen years of U.N. sanctions before the U.S. invasion last year.
Contrary to prewar statements by President Bush and top administration officials, Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, according to the report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group.
Duelfer's findings come less than four weeks before an election in which Bush's handling of Iraq has become the central issue. Democratic candidate John Kerry has seized on comments this week by the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, that the United States didn't have enough troops in Iraq to prevent a breakdown in security after Saddam was toppled.
The inspector's report could boost Kerry's contention that Bush rushed to war based on faulty intelligence and that sanctions and U.N. weapons inspectors should have been given more time.
Saddam a threat
But Duelfer also supports Bush's argument that Saddam remained a threat. Interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials made clear to inspectors that Saddam had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction and hoped to revive his weapons program if U.N. sanctions were lifted, the report said.
"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," Bush said in a campaign speech in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, defending the decision to invade. "In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."
A top Democrat in Congress, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said Duelfer's findings undercut the two main arguments for war: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he would share them with terrorists like al-Qaeda.
"We did not go to war because Saddam had future intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction," Levin said.
Traveling in Africa, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that the report shows that Saddam was "doing his best" to get around the United Nations' sanctions. For months, Blair has been trying to defend his justification for joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the face of heavy criticism from some in his own party.
Duelfer presented his findings in a report of more than 1,000 pages, and in appearances before Senate committees.
The report avoids direct comparisons with prewar claims by the Bush administration on Iraq's weapons systems. But Duelfer largely reinforces the conclusions of his predecessor, David Kay, who said in January, "We were almost all wrong" on Saddam's weapons programs. The White House did not endorse Kay's findings then, noting that Duelfer's team was continuing to search for weapons.
Duelfer found that Saddam, hoping to end U.N. sanctions, gradually began ending prohibited weapons programs starting in 1991. But as Iraq started receiving money through the U.N. oil-for-food program in the late 1990s, and as enforcement of the sanctions weakened, Saddam was able to take steps to rebuild his military, such as acquiring parts for missile systems.
However, the erosion of sanctions stopped after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Duelfer found, preventing Saddam from pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Duelfer's team found no written plans by Saddam's regime to pursue banned weapons if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Instead, the inspectors based their findings that Saddam hoped to reconstitute his programs on interviews with Saddam after his capture, as well as talks with other top Iraqi officials.
The inspectors found Saddam was particularly concerned about the threat posed by Iran, the country's enemy in a 1980-88 war. Saddam said he would meet Iran's threat by any means necessary, which Duelfer understood to mean weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam believed the use of chemical weapons against Iran prevented Iraq's defeat in that war. He also was prepared to use such weapons in 1991 if the U.S.-led coalition had tried to topple him in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday that Saddam "had the intent and capability" to build weapons of mass destruction, and that he was "a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction."
But before the war, the Bush administration cast Saddam as an immediate threat, not a gathering threat who would begin pursuing weapons in the future.
For example, Bush said in October 2002 that "Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more." Bush also said then, "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, said Wednesday that Duelfer's findings showed there is "no evidence whatsoever of the threats we were warned about." He spoke after Duelfer gave a closed-door briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said Duelfer showed Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction had degraded since 1998. But Roberts called the report inconclusive on what happened to weapons stockpiles Saddam is believed to have once possessed.
Interviews with Saddam left Duelfer's team with the impression that Saddam was more concerned about Iran and Israel as enemies than he was about the United States. Saddam appeared to hold out hope that U.S. leaders would ultimately recognize that it was in the country's interest to deal with Iraq as an important, secular, oil-rich Middle Eastern nation, the report found.
The Iraq Survey Group will continue operations and may prepare smaller reports on issues that remain unresolved, including whether weapons had been smuggled out of Iraq and about intelligence that Saddam had mobile biological weapons labs.
Da Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/opinion/07thu1.html?oref=login):
The Verdict Is In
Published: October 7, 2004
Sanctions worked. Weapons inspectors worked. That is the bottom line of the long-awaited report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, written by President Bush's handpicked investigator.
In the 18 months since President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, justifying the decision by saying that Saddam Hussein was "a gathering threat" to the United States, Americans have come to realize that Iraq had no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. But the report issued yesterday goes further. It says that Iraq had no factories to produce illicit weapons and that its ability to resume production was growing more feeble every year. While Mr. Hussein retained dreams of someday getting back into the chemical warfare business, his chosen target was Iran, not the United States.
The report shows that the international sanctions that Mr. Bush dismissed and demeaned before the war - and still does - were astonishingly effective. Mr. Hussein hoped to get out from under the sanctions, and the report's author, Charles Duelfer, loyally told Congress yesterday that he thought that could have happened. But his report said the Iraqis lacked even a formal strategy or a plan to reconstitute their weapons programs if it did.
For months, administration officials have tried to deflect charges that they invaded Iraq under false pretenses and have urged critics to wait for Mr. Duelfer's verdict on the weapons search. The authoritative findings of his Iraq Survey Group have now left the administration's rationale for war more tattered than ever. It turns out that Iraq destroyed all stockpiles of illicit weapons more than a decade ago and had no large-scale production facilities left after 1996, seven years before the invasion. This was a matter of choice by Saddam Hussein, who desperately wanted an end to sanctions and feared that any weapons programs, if discovered by inspectors, would only keep them in place.
Even after U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, a period when Western intelligence experts assumed the worst might be happening, the Hussein regime made no active efforts to produce new weapons of mass destruction. The much-feared nuclear threat - that looming mushroom cloud conjured by the administration to stampede Congress into authorizing an invasion - was a phantom. Mr. Duelfer found that even if Iraq had tried to restart its defunct nuclear program in 2003, it would have needed years to produce a nuclear weapon.
Since any objective observer should by now have digested the idea that Iraq posed no imminent threat to anyone, let alone the United States, it was disturbing to hear President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney continue to try to justify the invasion this week on the grounds that after Sept. 11, 2001, Iraq was clearly the most likely place for terrorists to get illicit weapons. Even if Mr. Hussein had wanted to arm groups he could not control - a very dubious notion- he had nothing to give them.
Administration officials will no doubt point to sections of the report citing evidence that front companies were supplying Iraq with banned materials, and that Iraq had money and expertise that could be used to make weapons. They will also point to Mr. Duelfer's speculation that support for the sanctions was eroding. But nothing in the voluminous record provides Mr. Bush with the justification he wanted for a preventive war because the weapons programs did not exist. And as the war continues to bog down, the power of nonviolent international sanctions looks more muscular every day.
madaboutpc
10-10-2004, 15:04
Originariamente inviato da SPhinX
Aspetta che prendo nota con la mia macchina da scrivere invisibile :O
Commissario Winchester rulez!
;) :D
Da: Nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/nyregion/19WIRE-PROTEST.html)
Anti-war Demonstrations on Second Anniversary of Invasion of Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK (AP) -- Anti-war activists marched in the streets of New York and other American cities on Saturday, stopping traffic and lying down alongside flag-draped cardboard coffins to mark the second anniversary of the war in Iraq.
Some of the demonstrators were arrested in New York as they demanded that U.S. troops be brought home.
"This country was founded by acts of civil disobedience," said David McReynolds, 75, of New York, as he marched along 42nd Street. "We have an obligation to make our resistance public and to say as clearly as we can that the war is illegal."
Organizers encouraged civility in San Francisco, where protests just after the war began were among the most vocal and angry in the country, with thousands of arrests and frequent conflicts between police and demonstrators.
"We are telling people to bring their families, their mothers, their children. We're taking the security and the integrity of these demonstrations very seriously," said Bill Hackwell, a spokesman for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, the main march coordinator.
About 350 people in New York listened to anti-war speeches at the United Nations, then marched along 42nd Street across Manhattan to Times Square, where police penned them in on a sidewalk.
A small contingent of protesters then knelt in front of a military recruiting station and lay down on Broadway next to the flag-draped coffins. Traffic was stopped for about five minutes before police moved in and arrested 27 protesters.
"It's such a small act in light of over 100,000 Iraqis dead and 1,500 American soldiers dead," Anna Brown, 40, of Jersey City, N.J., said before she was arrested.
Besides the Times Square event, there were rallies in Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. At least nine people were arrested at the other sites, according to an unofficial police count.
Veronica Momjian, 24, carried a handmade "Give Peace a Chance" sign in the Manhattan demonstration.
"I'm here to chastise the government for putting us in the middle of a bloody and disgusting war," she said. "Things are looking worse and there's no foreseeable end to this."
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/19/nyregion/nyprotest2.jpg
In Harlem today, anti-war demonstrators marched to a recuiting center near Lennox Avenue.
giofx....ti si seccassero le bolls...ma le persone che non sanno l'inglese non le consideri nemmeno eh....i sottotitoli in italiano no eh?:confused:
Originariamente inviato da manno
giofx....ti si seccassero le bolls...ma le persone che non sanno l'inglese non le consideri nemmeno eh....i sottotitoli in italiano no eh?:confused:
ma ti cadesse l'uccello a te! :O :p
chi non conosce l'inglese non legge gli articoli, semplice. Cosa devo fare, mettermi a tradurli tutti?!?
Swisström
20-03-2005, 23:33
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
ma ti cadesse l'uccello a te! :O :p
chi non conosce l'inglese non legge gli articoli, semplice. Cosa devo fare, mettermi a tradurli tutti?!?
IO l inglese lo so, ma trovo ASSOLUTAMENTE inutile citare articoli lunghi 3 pagine senza alcun commento, o spiegazione in merito... ;)
LittleLux
20-03-2005, 23:44
Originariamente inviato da Swisström
IO l inglese lo so, ma trovo ASSOLUTAMENTE inutile citare articoli lunghi 3 pagine senza alcun commento, o spiegazione in merito... ;)
Bè, mi sembra che questo sia un thread, diciamo così, di servizio. Un thread di informazione, nuda e cruda, sulla guerra irachena. Quindi i commenti penso siano superflui. Il thread ti porta la notizia, poi sta ad ognuno elaborarla ed interpretarla come crede. Almeno, sperando di aver interpretato correttamente lo spirito della discussione:D
tradurli tutti? è il minimo che potresti e dovresti fare..sei in un forum italiano no inglese...se porti una tua idea e delle notizie a suffragio di esse..dovresti mettere gli altri a conoscenza..come minimo...
ti si strappasse l'ano...:D
vBulletin® v3.6.4, Copyright ©2000-2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.