"Getting Personal: Ambassador Says White House Adviser Told Press His Wife Was 'Fair Game'" -- abcnews.com, 10/1/03:

The former ambassador who accused the White House of leaking the identity of his CIA officer wife to the press says Washington reporters told him that senior White House adviser Karl Rove said his wife was "fair game."

The ambassador, Joseph Wilson, said he plans to give the names of the reporters to the FBI, which is conducting a full-blown investigation of the possible leak.

"I will be revealing the names of everybody who called me and cited White House sources or cited people specifically," Wilson said in an interview with Nightline's Ted Koppel. . . .

On Aug. 21, at a public forum in Seattle, Wilson suggested that it was Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, who revealed his wife's identity. He later backtracked, saying he had no knowledge that it was Rove who personally leaked the information, but that he believed the White House adviser condoned the leak and did nothing to shut it down.

Wilson maintains that Washington reporters told him they spoke with Rove on the telephone after the Novak column came out.

"What I have confidence in -- based upon what respectable press people in this town have told me -- is that a week after the Novak article came out, Karl Rove was still calling around and talking to press people, saying Wilson's wife is fair game," Wilson said.

"The gist of the message, as it was reported back to me right after the phone call, was 'I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He tells me your wife is fair game.' "

The White House has said it is "ridiculous" to suggest Rove played any role in disclosing the identity of Wilson's wife, and Bush on Tuesday said he welcomed the Justice Department investigation into the leak.

"Columnist Wasn't Pawn for Leak" -- Robert Novak in The Chicago Sun-Times, 10/1/03:

I had thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's CIA-employee wife, but feel constrained to do so now that repercussions of my July 14 column have reached the front pages of major newspapers and led off network news broadcasts. My role and the role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation.

The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and critics of President Bush's Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.

The current Justice investigation stems from a routine, mandated probe of all CIA leaks, but follows weeks of agitation. Wilson, after telling me in July that he would say nothing about his wife, has made investigation of the leak his life's work -- aided by the relentless Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. These efforts cannot be separated from the massive political assault on President Bush.

This story began July 6 when Wilson went public and identified himself as the retired diplomat who had reported negatively to the CIA in 2002 on alleged Iraq efforts to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger. I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one.

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: ''Oh, you know about it.'' The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause ''difficulties'' if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.

How big a secret was it? It was well-known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's Who's Who in America entry.

A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my column as an ''operative'' -- a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official contact says she is ''covered'' -- working under the guise of another agency. However, an unofficial source at the agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations.

The Justice Department investigation was not requested by CIA Director George Tenet. Any leak of classified information is routinely passed by the agency to Justice, averaging one a week. This investigative request was made in July shortly after the column was published. Reported only last weekend, the request ignited anti-Bush furor.

"Editorial: Scandal/Who Outed CIA Agent Plame?" -- Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 10/1/03:

This scandal should have unfolded in July, but the mainstream media weren't interested. The story was kept alive because of dogged work by a few online bloggers, most especially Josh Marshall of "TalkingPointsMemo" (you can find him in the blogs section of www.startribune.com/2cents ). The bloggers will never get the attention and the high praise they deserve for keeping attention focused on this. So let it be noted here at least.

It finally hit the mainstream last weekend, when NBC reported that CIA Director George Tenet had requested a Justice Department investigation of the case. . . .

The Justice Department has responded affirmatively to Tenet's request for an investigation. But get this: When Justice informed the White House of the investigation Monday evening, it said it would be all right if the staff was notified Tuesday morning to safeguard all material that related to the case. The staff had all night to get rid of anything incriminating.

That incredible tidbit supports calls by Democrats and a slew of others for Attorney General John Ashcroft to appoint a special counsel to investigate this case. They're right: Ashcroft has no credibility in this, and neither does the White House, given its habitual effort to spin information, mislead the American people and smear anyone who disagrees with it. This developing scandal ultimately goes to the even more serious question of administration manipulation of intelligence on Iraq, where American soldiers continue to die almost every day in a campaign that looks increasingly like a bad mistake.

"Outside Probe of Leaks Is Favored" -- Dana Milbank and Mike Allen in The Washington Post, 10/2/03:

Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe a special prosecutor should be named to investigate allegations that Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday.

The poll, taken after the Justice Department announced that it had opened a criminal probe into the matter, pointed to several troubling signs for the White House as Bush aides decide how to contain the damage. The survey found that 81 percent of Americans considered the matter serious, while 72 percent thought it likely that someone in the White House leaked the agent's name.

Confronted with little public support for the White House view that the investigation should be handled by the Justice Department, Bush aides began yesterday to adjust their response to the expanding probe. They reined in earlier, broad portrayals of innocence in favor of more technical arguments that it is possible the disclosure was made without knowledge that a covert operative was being exposed and therefore might not have been a crime.

As the White House hunkered down, it got the first taste of criticism from within Bush's own party. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said that Bush "needs to get this behind him" by taking a more active role. "He has that main responsibility to see this through and see it through quickly, and that would include, if I was president, sitting down with my vice president and asking what he knows about it," the outspoken Hagel said last night on CNBC's "Capital Report."

"Attorney General Is Closely Linked to Inquiry Figures" -- Elisabeth Bumiller and Eric Lichtblau in The New York Times, 10/2/03:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 -- Deep political ties between top White House aides and Attorney General John Ashcroft have put him into a delicate position as the Justice Department begins a full investigation into whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer.

Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, whose possible role in the case has raised questions, was a paid consultant to three of Mr. Ashcroft's campaigns in Missouri, twice for governor and for United States senator, in the 1980's and 1990's, an associate of Mr. Rove said on Wednesday.

Jack Oliver, the deputy finance chairman of Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, was the director of Mr. Ashcroft's 1994 Senate campaign, and later worked as Mr. Ashcroft's deputy chief of staff.

Those connections led Democrats on Wednesday to assert that Mr. Rove's connections to Mr. Ashcroft amounted to a clear conflict of interest and undermined the integrity of the investigation. The disclosures have also emboldened Democrats who have called for the appointment of an outside counsel. . . .

[T]he relationships have given new grist to the Democrats. "This is not like, `Oh, yeah, they're both Republicans, they've been in the same room together,' " said Roy Temple, the former executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party and the former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Mel Carnahan of Missouri. "Karl Rove was once part of John Ashcroft's political strategic team. You have both the actual conflict, and the appearance of conflict. It doesn't matter what's in the deep, dark recesses of their hearts. It stinks."

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said she was particularly concerned about the past campaign work that Mr. Rove did for Mr. Ashcroft. "Given allegations about the involvement of senior White House officials and the past close association between the attorney general and those officials, the investigation should be headed by a person independent of the administration," Ms. Pelosi said.

On Wednesday, Justice Department officials would not rule out the possibility of Mr. Ashcroft's appointing a special counsel, or recusing himself from the inquiry.

"We're leaving all legal options open," said Mark Corallo, a department spokesman.

And the associate of Mr. Rove said of the attorney general, "He's going to have to recuse himself, don't you think?"

Mr. Bush himself salvaged Mr. Ashcroft's political career by selecting him as attorney general after Mr. Ashcroft lost his Senate race in 2000 to Mr. Carnahan, who was killed in a plane crash just before the election.

In 2001, Mr. Ashcroft recused himself from an investigation into accusations against Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey because Mr. Torricelli had campaigned against him in Missouri. Mr. Torricelli withdrew from his re-election race. . . .

Justice Department officials said that it was too early to say which administration officials would be subjects of their investigation, but they are likely to seek information from many senior advisers at the White House, including Mr. Rove.

An associate said Mr. Rove had been hired by Mr. Ashcroft in 1984, in Mr. Ashcroft's first successful race for governor of Missouri, to handle the campaign's mail solicitations for political contributions. The associate said Mr. Rove also handled Mr. Ashcroft's direct-mail solicitations for his 1988 re-election campaign and his 1994 Senate campaign, both of them successful.

By 1998, Mr. Rove had sold his direct-mail operation, Karl Rove and Company of Austin, Tex., at the request of Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for president and wanted his political aide unencumbered. In 2000, Mr. Rove worked for Mr. Bush and played no official role in Mr. Ashcroft's losing Senate race.

Nina Totenberg on NPR's "All Things Considered," 10/1/03 (as transcribed at

atrios.blogspot.com):

They may try and recover deleted email files for certain dates . . .

The White house asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day before issuing a directive to preserve all documents and logs which led one seasoned federal prosecutor to wonder why they wanted to wait a day, and who at the justice department told them they could do that, and why?

"White House Looks to Manage Fallout over C.I.A. Leak Inquiry" -- Richard W. Stevenson and Eric Lichtblau in The New York Times, 10/2/03:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 -- The Bush administration pursued a two-track political strategy on Wednesday to minimize the damage from the criminal investigation into the disclosure of a C.I.A. officer's identity.

The White House encouraged Republicans to portray the former diplomat at the center of the case, Joseph C. Wilson IV, as a partisan Democrat with an agenda and the Democratic Party as scandalmongering. At the same time, the administration and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill worked to ensure that no Republicans in Congress break ranks and call for an independent inquiry outside the direct control of the Justice Department.

"It's slime and defend," said one Republican aide on Capitol Hill, describing the White House's effort to raise questions about Mr. Wilson's motivations and its simultaneous effort to shore up support in the Republican ranks.

"So far so good," the aide said. "There's nervousness on the part of the party leadership, but no defections in the sense of calling for an independent counsel." . . .

A senior House Republican aide said he thought that House Republicans had been unified by the Democratic response to the investigation.

"The overreaching by the Democrats on the special counsel and the personal attacks on the president have had a galvanizing effect, not a demoralizing effect," he said.

Still, one Republican with close ties to the administration said the White House was monitoring five Republicans in Congress, all of whom have an independent streak on foreign policy and intelligence matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John W. Warner of Virginia, and Representative Porter J. Goss of Florida.

"The Plame Game" -- Howard Fineman at msnbc.com, 10/2/03:

I'll stipulate that it is a felony to disclose the name of an undercover CIA operative who has been posted overseas in recent years. That's what the statute says. But the now infamous outing of Victoria Plame isn't primarily an issue of law. It's about a lot of other things, like: the ongoing war between the CIA and the vice president's office; the long, complex relationship between George Tenet and the Bush family; the tinge of arrogance among some (as yet unidentified) members of Bush's team; and, ominously for the president, a breakdown in discipline among his spin doctors, who, in the old days, always wrote the same prescription. . . .

[T]he yellowcake allegation got into the president's now infamous State of the Union address, attributed only to the Brits. When the speech came under fire for accuracy (or lack thereof), the CIA at first ducked. Then White House aides let it be known that the agency had "signed off" on the entire contents of the speech, after which the CIA came forward to say yes, after much discussion and emendation, that they'd approved it. Tenet took the heat. But it was clear that he had been forced to do so. . . .

It was a fascinating moment if you know the history. The way I hear the story, Bush Two, when he was elected, had his doubts about Tenet, but was told he was a "good guy" by the ultimate arbiter of "good guys" in the Bush Family, Bush One. Tenet had curried favor with the family years earlier when he was still an intelligence bureaucrat on the Hill, serving as chief of staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Though he was working in a Democrat-controlled environment, Tenet helped out -- or at least did not stand in the way -- when Bush One wanted to appoint his friend, Robert Gates, to head the CIA. Word was that Tenet was a "team player" -- a standup guy, not a relentless Democratic partisan by any means. An expert at the inside game from his years as a staffer on the Hill, Tenet knew how to fit into Bush Two's world. He did so with ease from the start.

Bush presumably trusted Tenet and the CIA to get the goods on Saddam and his WMD. Cheney's staff evidently did too. But why did Tenet send Wilson to Africa? Maybe he just thought he was sending the most qualified guy. But the neo-cons and their allies came to see it as a conspiracy to ignore the truth -- especially after Wilson, last July, went public with the essence of his findings, which was that the yellowcake rumors were false.

The moment that piece hit the op-ed page of the New York Times, it was all-out war between the pro- and anti-war factions, and between the CIA and its critics. I am told by what I regard as a very reliable source inside the White House that aides there did, in fact, try to peddle the identity of Joe Wilson's wife to several reporters. But the motive wasn't revenge or intimidation so much as a desire to explain why, in their view, Wilson wasn't a neutral investigator, but, a member of the CIA's leave-Saddam-in-place team.

And on Tenet's part, it was time for payback -- whatever his past relationship with the Bush's had been. First, he and his agency had been humiliated, caught by the White House trying to distance themselves from the president's speech. Then the CIA was forced to admit that it had signed off on the speech. Now one of its own investigations was coming under attack, as was one of its own undercover staffers.

Are we to believe that it was a routine matter for the CIA to forward to the Department of Justice a complaint about the leak of Victoria Plame's name and job? Are we to think that Tenet didn't know that the complaint was being forwarded? Or that Tenet couldn't have shortstopped it if he wanted to? . . .

Bush preaches humility, and believes it is a cardinal virtue. But some of the people around him honor it in the breach. If it can be proved that they did, in fact, leak Mrs. Wilson's name and job, they committed an act of arrogance -- and political stupidity. You'd think that the Bush White House would know an essential lesson of presidential survival in Washington: You don't pick a fight with the CIA. Nixon learned the consequences of doing so; Bush One, a former director of the CIA, could have explained it to his son.

"Putin Says U.S. Faces Big Risks in Effort in Iraq" -- Steven Lee Myers in The New York Times, 10/6/03:

MOSCOW, Monday, Oct. 6 -- President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia says the United States now faces in Iraq the possibility of a prolonged, violent and ultimately futile war like the one that mired the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

In an expansive interview on Saturday evening, Mr. Putin warned that Iraq could "become a new center, a new magnet for all destructive elements." He added, without naming them, that "a great number of members of different terrorist organizations" have been drawn into the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

To respond to this emerging threat, he said, the Bush administration must move quickly to restore sovereignty to Iraqis and to secure a new United Nations resolution that would clearly define how long international forces remain there. . . .

Mr. Hussein's government had, with reason, been called "a criminal one," Mr. Putin said, but he disputed one of the core reasons given by President Bush for attacking Iraq in March: the assertion that it had ties to international Islamic militancy and terrorism. Rather, he suggested that the invasion of Iraq had created a terrorist haven where one did not previously exist.

"It struggled against the fundamentalists," he said of Mr. Hussein's government. "He either exterminated them physically or put them in jail or just sent them into exile."

Now, he added, with Mr. Hussein ousted, "The coalition forces received two enemies at once -- both the remains of the Saddam regime, who fight with them, and those who Saddam himself had fought in the past -- the fundamentalists."

Mr. Putin did not identify the militants entering Iraq, but he said they came "from all the Muslim world." Those militants, he suggested, may now find themselves at ease in Iraq, as they once were among the Afghans, and the "danger exists" of a decade-long struggle like the one fought by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Such fears, he added, "are not groundless." . . .

Although Russia seeks a rapid return of sovereignty to Iraq, it would accept a dominant role for the American military in providing security, he said, as well as a gradual rather than a rapid transfer of actual power to the Iraqi authorities. Given the money it has spent and is spending there, America has to play a leading role in Iraq, he suggested.

This position -- calling for a greater United Nations role in Iraq but apparently acknowledging American primacy -- puts Russia at odds with some countries, like France, that have been more critical of the United States. Mr. Putin described the Russian position as "very pragmatic and flexible."

"George W. Bush's Medieval Presidency" -- Neal Gabler in The Los Angeles Times, 10/5/03:

At least since the Progressive era, America has been an empire of empiricism, a nation not only of laws but of facts. As heirs of the Enlightenment, the Progressives had an abiding faith in the power of rationality and a belief in the science of governing. Elect officeholders of good intent, arm them with sufficient information and they could guide the government for the public weal. From this seed sprang hundreds of government agencies dedicated to churning out data: statistics on labor, health, education, economics, the environment, you name it. These were digested by bureaucrats and policymakers, then spun into laws and regulations. When the data changed, so presumably would policy. Government went where the facts led it.

Conservatives have often denounced statistics-addicted bureaucrats as social engineers, but they have been no less reliant on data than liberals, because they were no less convinced that government could be rationally conducted. They simply disagreed with liberals on where rationality would take us. President Reagan might dispute economic statistics, and he certainly reinterpreted them to demonstrate how his tax cuts would lead to growth and a balanced budget, as counterintuitive as that seemed. Still, he didn't dispense with facts. He marshaled them to his cause to illustrate that he saw reality more clearly than his antagonists.

The difference between the current administration and its conservative forebears is that facts don't seem to matter at all. They don't even matter enough to reinterpret. Bush doesn't read the papers or watch the news, and Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor, reportedly didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate, which is apparently why she missed the remarks casting doubt on claims that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Africa. (She reportedly read the document later.) And although Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld hasn't disavowed reading or watching the news, he has publicly and proudly disavowed paying any attention to it. In this administration, everyone already knows the truth.

A more sinister aspect to this presidency's cavalier attitude toward facts is its effort to bend, twist and distort them when it apparently serves the administration's interests. Intelligence was exaggerated to justify the war in Iraq. Even if there were no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or of ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the CIA was expected to substantiate the accusations. In a similar vein, the New Republic reported that Treasury Department economists had been demoted for providing objective analysis that would help define policy, as they had done in previous administrations. Now they provide fodder for policy already determined. Said one economist who had worked in the Clinton, Reagan and first Bush administrations, "They didn't worry about whether they agreed; we were encouraged to raise issues." Not anymore.

Even the scientific community has been waved off by the medievalists. A minority staff report issued last month by the House Government Reform Committee investigating scientific research found 21 areas in which the administration had "manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," including the president's assurance that there were more than 60 lines for stem-cell research when there were actually only 11; it concluded that "these actions go far beyond the typical shifts in policy that occur with a change in the political party occupying the White House." When a draft report of the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year included data on global warming, the White House ordered them expunged. Another EPA report, on air quality at ground zero in Manhattan, was altered to provide false reassurance that no danger existed, even though it did.

Every administration spins the facts to its advantage. As the old adage goes, "Figures don't lie but liars do figure." But the White House medievalists aren't just shading the facts. In actively denying or changing them, they are changing the basis on which government has traditionally been conducted: rationality. There is no respect for facts because there is no respect for empiricism. Instead, the Bush ideologues came to power smug in the security of their own worldview, part of which, frankly, seems to be the belief that it would be soft and unmanly to let facts alter their preconceptions. Like the church confronting Galileo, they aren't about to let reality destroy their cosmology, whether it is a bankrupt plan for pacifying an Iraq that was supposed to welcome us as liberators or a bankrupt fiscal plan that was supposed to jolt the economy to health.

"Why Bush Angers Liberals" -- Michael Kinsley in Time, October 13, 2003 (online at time.com, 10/6/03):

So why are liberals so angry? Here is a view from inside the beast: it's Bush as a person and his policies as well. To start, we do think he stole the election. Yes, yes, we're told to "get over it," and we've been pretty damned gracious. But we can't help it: this still rankles. What rankles especially is Bush's almost total lack of grace about the extraordinary way he took office. Theft aside, he indisputably got fewer votes than the other guy, our guy. We expected some soothing bipartisan balm. There was none, even after 9/11. (Would it have been that hard to appoint a Democrat as head of Homeland Security, in a "bring us together" spirit?)

We also thought that Bush's apparent affability, and his lack of knowledge or strong views or even great interest in policy issues, would make him temperate on the ideological thermometer. (Psst! We also thought, and still think, he's pretty dumb ? though you're not supposed to say it and we usually don't. And we thought that this too would make him easier to swallow.) It turns out, though, that Bush's, um, unreflectiveness shores up his ideological backbone. An adviser who persuades Bush to adopt Policy X does not have to be worried that our President will keep turning it over in his mind, monitoring its progress, reading and thinking about the complaints of its critics, perhaps even re-examining it on the basis of subsequent developments, and announce one day that he prefers Policy Y. This does not happen. He knows what he thinks, and he has to be told it only once.

This dynamic works on facts just as it does on policies, making Bush a remarkably successful liar. This too is unexpected. There seemed to be something guileless and nonneurotic about Bush when we first made his acquaintance. It was the flip side of his, um, dimness and seemed to promise frankness if nothing else. But guess what? Ignorance and lack of curiosity are terrific fortifications for dishonesty. Bill Clinton knew that he had had sex with that woman and had to work hard to convince himself that he hadn't. Bush neither knew nor cared whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or close connections to al-Qaeda when he started to say so, and once he started, mere lack of evidence was not going to make him stop.

Just this week, responding to the brouhaha about the alleged White House outing of an undercover CIA agent, Bush declared that he takes leaks very seriously and deplores them. Liberals across America screamed into their TV sets, "But that leak was in the papers two months ago, and you did nothing about it until the fuss started last weekend!" If Bush could hear them, he might furrow his brow in puzzlement and say, "And your point is?" Steeped as liberals are in irony, it took us a while to learn what a powerful tool an irony-free mind can be.

"White House to Overhaul Iraq and Afghan Missions" -- David E. Sanger in The New York Times, 10/6/03:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 -- The White House has ordered a major reorganization of American efforts to quell violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to speed the reconstruction of both countries, according to senior administration officials.

The new effort includes the creation of an "Iraq Stabilization Group," which will be run by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The decision to create the new group, five months after Mr. Bush declared the end of active combat in Iraq, appears part of an effort to assert more direct White House control over how Washington coordinates its efforts to fight terrorism, develop political structures and encourage economic development in the two countries. . . .

The reorganization was described in a confidential memorandum that Ms. Rice sent Thursday to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet.

Asked about the memorandum on Sunday, Ms. Rice called it "a recognition by everyone that we are in a different phase now" that Congress is considering Mr. Bush's request for $20 billion for reconstruction and $67 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. She said it was devised by herself, Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Powell and Mr. Rumsfeld in response to discussions she held with Mr. Bush at his ranch in late August.

The creation of the group, according to several administration officials, grew out of Mr. Bush's frustration at the setbacks in Iraq and the absence of more visible progress in Afghanistan, at a moment when remnants of the Taliban appear to be newly active. It is the closest the White House has come to an admission that its plans for reconstruction in those countries have proved insufficient, and that it was unprepared for the guerrilla-style attacks that have become more frequent in Iraq. There have been more American deaths in Iraq since the end of active combat than during the six weeks it took to take control of the country. . . .

In the interview, Ms. Rice described the new organization as one intended to support the Pentagon, not supplant it.

"The N.S.C. staff is first and foremost the president's staff," she said, "but it is of course the staff to the National Security Council." That group will in effect be taking more direct responsibility.

The council is made up of top advisers to the president who meet three times a week in the Situation Room. They have often seemed unable to coordinate efforts on the main issues relating to the occupation of Iraq. "The Pentagon remains the lead agency, and the structure has been set up explicitly to provide assistance to the Defense Department and coalition provisional authority," Ms. Rice said.

Other officials said the effect of Ms. Rice's memorandum would be to move day-to-day issues of administering Iraq to the White House.

The counterterrorism group, for example, will be run by Frances F. Townsend, Ms. Rice's deputy for that field. Economic issues -- from oil to electricity to the distribution of a new currency -- will be coordinated by Gary Edson. He has been the liaison between the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.

Robert D. Blackwill, a former ambassador to India, will run the group overseeing the creation of political institutions in Iraq, as well as directing stabilization for Afghanistan.

Anna Perez, Ms. Rice's communications director, will focus on a coordinated media message -- a response to concerns about the daily reports of attacks on American troops and lawlessness in the streets.

"Iraq Shake-Up Skipped Rumsfeld" -- Mike Allen in The Washington Post, 10/8/03:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he was not told in advance about a reorganization of the Iraq reconstruction, which he heads. He said he still does not know the reason for the shake-up.

Rumsfeld said in an interview with the Financial Times and three European news organizations that he did not learn of the new Iraq Stabilization Group until he received a classified memo about it from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Thursday.

Rumsfeld was asked several times why the changes were necessary. "I think you have to ask Condi that question," he said, according to a transcript posted on the Web site of the Financial Times.

Pressed, he said: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? I was not there for the backgrounding."

Rumsfeld's tart remarks offer a window on the tensions among members of President Bush's war cabinet, which are vividly described by administration officials but are rarely visible to outsiders. Rumsfeld's bluntness has occasionally rankled allies and caused headaches for the White House, but Bush is said to remain supportive. . . .

Rumsfeld said Rice's new system looks like a restatement of "the job of the National Security Council, to coordinate among different departments and agencies."

"Unfortunately, it's a classified memo. It shouldn't be. There's nothing in it that's classified," he said. "I kind of wish they'd just release the memorandum."

One source said the perception among some in the administration was that the Pentagon had been "neutered" by the changes, inasmuch as the White House now will be involved in budget and other decisions that had been the sole province of L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator in Iraq, who reports to Rumsfeld.

"The White House: Barely Managing" -- Daniel W. Drezner in The New Republic, reproduced at cbsnews.com, 10/7/03:

A detached management style combined with smart and aggressive subordinates can produce two structural flaws in the policy process. The first is that if major foreign policy players disagree, the potential for unending bureaucratic conflict is high. Even when the president clearly articulates the desired ends for policy, furious battles will erupt over the means to achieve those ends. In a cabinet filled with accommodating or like-minded individuals, such disputes can be settled quickly. In a cabinet with the likes of Powell and Rumsfeld -- confident men with genuine differences of opinion over the best way to advance the national interest -- the battles never cease. The current scuffles between State and Defense in the Bush administration are eerily reminiscent of the legendary set-tos between George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger under Reagan.

The costs of such disputes can be significant. The more resources and energy that policy principals devote to bureaucratic infighting, the less they have available for focusing on effective policy implementation. This was certainly the case with Iraq. The different components of the executive branch were embroiled in disputes on multiple fronts over postwar management, ranging from the role of Ahmed Chalabi to the role of the United Nations. In all of those disputes, the recondite issue of Iraq's deteriorating electricity grid apparently never came up. The result was that Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department ended up administering postwar Iraq but being surprised by the electricity problem, while Colin Powell's State Department was marginalized but fully aware of it.

The other structural flaw is both more rare and more frightening. When different parts of the executive branch are locked in constant conflict, the result is a permissive environment. Officials become used to the notion that they will have to act as aggressively as possible to win an argument. Lines of communication between different parts of the executive branch become frayed or severed. Add weak oversight to the mix, and you have a situation in which bureaucratic entrepreneurs will be tempted to push their agendas to the point where ethical rules are violated -- or laws are broken.

In the Reagan administration, this management style contributed to the Iran-Contra fiasco.

In the Bush administration, the battles over Iraq's WMD program have led to open hostility between the Defense Department and the CIA. The leaks and counter-leaks over Nigerian yellowcake have escalated to the point where the Justice Department is investigating whether anyone in the White House violated federal law and jeopardized national security by outing the identity of an undercover CIA operative. What's amazing about this episode is that, if true, a felony was committed over what was truly a minor dispute. Which leads to a troubling question -- if an administration official was willing to commit an overtly illegal act in dealing with such a piddling matter, what lines have been or will be crossed on not-so-piddling matters?

Harpers Weekly Review, 10/7/03

"U.S. May Drop Quest for U.N. Vote on Iraq" -- Steven R. Weisman and Felicity Barringer in The New York Times, 10/8/03:

ASHINGTON, Oct. 7 -- The Bush administration has run into such stiff opposition at the United Nations Security Council to its plan for the future government of Iraq that it has pulled back from seeking a quick vote endorsing the proposal and may shelve it altogether, administration officials said Tuesday.

Two weeks after President Bush appealed at the United Nations for help in securing and reconstructing Iraq, administration officials said, his top aides will decide soon whether it is worth the effort to get a United Nations endorsement. . . .

The new pessimism about winning United Nations support results from the cool reception accorded to the administration's most recent draft on Iraqi self-government, which was supposedly redrawn to take into account suggestions of Security Council members.

What little momentum there was behind the American proposal was deflated after the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, disclosed his own reservations last week, much to the surprise of administration officials.

Mr. Annan, according to diplomats who have talked to him, essentially takes the view of the French that the violent attacks on Americans in Iraq would subside once an interim Iraqi government was established, perhaps in a matter of months. . . .

As things stood on Tuesday, officials said, the administration faced two unpalatable options. One was that it would not win the votes to pass a resolution to its liking; the other was that its victory margin would be so thin that approval would send a signal of a divided Security Council rather than one that wanted to help.

The principal point of contention between the United States and Britain, on the one hand, and Mr. Annan, France and other Council members on the other, is the American intention to retain full control over Iraq during what could be a long period of writing a constitution, holding elections and restoring sovereignty.

Mr. Annan's comments were especially compelling to Council members because he warned that in light of the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in the summer, he could not in good conscience send his personnel into a dangerous environment to play a role subordinate to the American occupation.

California recall exit poll data, washingtonpost.com, accessed 10/10/03:

Twenty-seven percent of voters approved of Davis's performance as governor. Ten percent of them voted "Yes" on the recall.

Forty-five percent of voters had an unfavorable opinion of Schwarzenegger. Nineteen percent of them voted "Yes" on the recall.

Thirty-two percent of voters belonged to a union household. Forty-nine percent of them voted "Yes" on the recall.

"Russia to Price Oil in Euros in Snub to US" -- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The London Telegraph, 10/10/03:

Russia is to start pricing its huge oil and gas exports in euros instead of dollars as part of a stragetic shift to forge closer ties with the European Union.

The Russian central bank has been amassing euros since early 2002, increasing the euro share of its $65 billion (?40 billion) foreign reserves from 10pc to more than 25pc, according to the finance ministry.

The move has set off a chain reaction in the private sector, leading to a fourfold increase in euro deposits in Russian banks this year and sending Russian citizens scrambling to change their stashes of greenbacks into euro notes.

German officials said Chancellor Gerhard Schroder secured agreement for the change-over on oil pricing from Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, while on a trip to Russia this week. . . .

A switch to euro invoicing would not affect the long-term price of oil but it could encourage Middle Eastern exporters to follow suit and have a powerful effect on market psychology at a time when the dollar is already under intense pressure. Russia boasts the world's biggest natural gas reserves and is the number two oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. . . .

Oil is seen as so central to the global power structure that the choice of currency used for pricing has acquired almost totemic significance. The switch from pounds to dollars after the Second World War has come to symbolise sterling's demise as a world reserve currency.

If the dollar were ever displaced by the euro, it would lose the enormous freedom it now enjoys in running macro-economic policy. Washington would also forfeit the privilege of exchanging dollar notes for imports, worth an estimated 0.5pc of GDP.

Maxim Shein, from BrokerKreditService in Moscow, said the switch to euros makes sense for Russia since it supplies half of Europe's energy needs. But the move is also part of a global realignment stemming from the Iraq war, which threw Russia, Germany and France together into a new Triple Entente.

"Abandoning the dollar is tantamount to a curtsey to the EU," he said. For now, IMF figures show the dollar remains king, accounting for 68pc of foreign reserves worldwide compared with 13pc for the euro.

"Iraq: More Spin, Bureaucracy" -- editorial, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 10/11/03:

When the White House announced it was reorganizing its approach to reconstructing Iraq, the obvious conclusion was that President Bush now understands things aren't going well there. At every opportunity, he says they are, but they're not. On one hand, it's encouraging that he finally seems to grasp that. On the other, his prescribed solution is a monumental disappointment.

The reorganization plan calls for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to chair an Iraq Stabilization Group, which the White House described as a coordinator "of interagency efforts, as well as providing a support group" to the Pentagon and its chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer. "Stabilization" is an interesting word for the White House to use; it implies that the situation now is unstable.

What went unsaid, but has been abundantly clear this week, is that Rice's appointment was an attempt to end the fighting between the Pentagon and the State Department over Iraq policy. As one Washington insider said, it's like when two kids are fighting over a toy and a parent comes into the room. The toy gets taken away, and things settle down.

Also clear is that this was a stinging defeat for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rice referred to prior conversations about the reorganization with Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet. But Rumsfeld angrily denied having such conversations or being involved in planning the new structure. His pique is an indication of just how much he's on the outs with the White House, the State Department, and even his neocon friends, over his approach to rebuilding Iraq.

So you have a mess in Washington and in Iraq. The answer surely isn't to add another level of bureaucracy in Washington. What's needed are wiser heads, and a lot of them, from a lot of countries, on the ground in Baghdad.

That's what the Bush administration appeared to seek a week ago when it offered a new draft resolution it hoped to get endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, which would lead the way to truly internationalizing the rebuilding effort in Iraq. The new draft gave little ground on U.S. control in Iraq, however, and brought scathing responses from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, France, Germany and Russia. Soft-spoken, usually circumspect Annan flat out said he would not risk the lives of more personnel for the marginal U.N. role outlined in the draft resolution.

With creation of the Iraq Stabilization Group just a couple of days later, the White House was thumbing its nose at the Security Council and signaling that it has given up on getting U.N. support in Iraq. The effort won't be internationalized; it will be bureaucratized.

"Tax Revenue at 44-Year Low in Proportion to U.S. Economy" -- Jonathan Weisman in The Washington Post, 10/11/03:

Federal tax receipts relative to the overall economy have reached their lowest level since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, while government spending has climbed to the highest point since Bill Clinton declared the era of big government over, according to new figures released by the Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO closed its books on the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 with a report that presents a mixed picture of the federal government's financial position. Although it documented a large fiscal imbalance that's expected to grow, the report from Congress' nonpartisan budget scorekeeper also showed how the economy's building strength helped reduce the near-term growth rate of the federal budget deficit. . . .

As a snapshot of the government's fiscal health, 2003 invited historic comparisons. The $374 billion deficit surpassed the previous record of $290 billion set in 1992, although it was shy of the 1992 level after adjustment for inflation.

A sluggish economy and three successive tax cuts pushed 2003 tax receipts to $1.78 trillion, $70 billion less than in the previous year. Expressed as percentage of the economy, the federal tax take fell to 16.6 percent, the lowest level since 1959.

Tax revenue has now fallen for three successive years, which hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Since receipts peaked in 2000, they have fallen by $242 billion, or 12 percent.

Last year, corporate tax receipts fell by 11.1 percent, just 1.2 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. That is the lowest since 1983, and the second lowest since 1936. Since they peaked in 2000, corporate tax payments have plunged nearly 29 percent.

Individual income taxes fell by 7.5 percent last year and are off 21 percent from their 2000 peak. Only Medicare and Social Security taxes have continued to climb since the boom years of the 1990s, and that money -- which politicians pledged to save -- is financing other parts of the government.

"It is revenue collection which dropped off a cliff," [White House Budget Director Joshua B.] Bolten said.

Federal spending -- driven by war and rising health care costs -- has been on the opposite trajectory. Spending rose $146 billion, or 7.3 percent, from 2002, to $2.16 trillion. In 2003, spending equaled 20.3 percent of the economy, the highest level since 1996, when Clinton hailed the end of big government in his State of the Union address.

Those numbers may understate the surge in spending since historically low interest rates have cut the cost of interest payments on the $3.9 trillion federal debt held by the public, the CBO said. Excluding the fall in interest payments, federal spending rose 8.9 percent last year.

The two big federal health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid, grew by 8.4 percent in 2003, a cause for concern, Bolten conceded.

But the real driver on the spending side was the military, which consumed $389 billion in 2003, a 17.2 percent increase in a single year. That was the fastest growth rate in 20 years, the CBO said, and more than double the average 7 percent growth in non-defense programs.

Since Bush took office, military spending has increased 34 percent, and is up 50 percent since 1999, when military spending totaled $261 billion.

"Myths of the 2002 Election" -- Ruy Teixeira at tompaine.com, 10/9/2003:

[T]he Voter News Service (VNS) exit poll (now defunct) went into a massive meltdown during the election day of 2002 and the results of the exit poll were not used at the time in any election projections, or released in any other way. However, that meltdown was not because the data collected were faulty, but rather because the computer system designed to process the data and make the appropriate projections crashed and burned.

So -- finally -- it has been possible for a file of the original national (though not state) data to be released by the VNS consortium for public use. Public Opinion Watch has secured a copy of these data and has been conducting analyses to clarify some of the outstanding issues of the 2002 election.

One such issue is the extent (or lack thereof) of minority support for Republicans in the 2002 election. Republicans have typically claimed that Republicans did well with minority voters in '02, especially Hispanics, and that that was one of the secrets to their success in that election, while others, like Public Opinion Watch have said this is, to put it politely, complete baloney. What do the VNS data tell us about this controversy?

Well, if we were to believe Republican pollster David Winston's article in Roll Call, the VNS data show that it is a myth that "Republicans can't attract minority voters in significant numbers". Public Opinion Watch begs to differ. The VNS 2002 data are actually completely consistent with that so-called myth. Republicans are still having huge difficulties attracting minority voters and the 2002 election was not an exception. Where the GOP did do exceptionally well was among white voters, where they received 60 percent of the white vote. That's up from 57 percent in 1998, the last off-year election and the best point of comparison, and also from 2000, where they received 56 percent of the white vote.

Winton claims, however, that the GOP had a breakthrough year among Hispanics. He cites as evidence a drop in Hispanic support for Congressional Democrats and rise in support for Republicans between 2000 and 2002. While Winston's data for '02 are wrong and exaggerate this change, it is true that the Hispanic two party House vote was 65 percent Democratic/35 percent Republican in '00 and did fall modestly to 62 percent/38 percent in '02. However, Hispanic support for House Democrats traditionally falls at least several points from a Presidential to an off-year election, so this says little about a real trend toward the Republicans. The more pertinent comparison is to 1998, the last off- year election, where Hispanics supported Democrats by 63 percent to 37 percent. So, basically, we have a shift in off-year Democratic support from 63/37 to 62/38. If that's a trend, Public Opinion Watch will eat his calculator.

Well, what about the Senate races? These were the most significant races of '02 and perhaps a pro-GOP surge can be detected here. Nope, the Senate two party vote among Hispanics was 67 percent Democratic/33 percent Republican. Governors, then? Not here, either -- Democratic support among Hispanics was a healthy 65 percent to 35 percent.

What about other minorities? Not much luck here either for the GOP. In fact, blacks and Asians both appear to have increased their support for the Democrats. The two party black vote for the House went from 89 percent Democrat/11 percent Republican in both 1998 and 2000 to a 91 percent/9 percent split in 2002. And Asians increased their support dramatically for House Democrats going from 56 percent Democratic/44 percent Republican in 1998 to 60 percent/40 percent in 2000 to 66 percent/34 percent in 2002!

Much more "progress" like this among minority voters and the GOP -- aka "the white people's party" -- will have a very limited future indeed.

"Probe Focuses on Month before Leak to Reporters" -- Walter Pincus and Mike Allen in The Washington Post, 10/12/03:

FBI agents investigating the disclosure of a CIA officer's identity have begun by examining events in the month before the leak, when the CIA, the White House and Vice President Cheney's office first were asked about former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, according to sources familiar with the probe.

The name of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a clandestine case officer, was revealed in a July 14 column by Robert D. Novak that quoted two unidentified senior administration officials.

In their interviews, FBI agents are asking questions about events going back to at least early June, the sources said. That indicates investigators are examining not just who passed the information to Novak and other reporters but also how Plame's name may have first become linked with Wilson and his mission, who did it and how the information made its way around the government.

Administration sources said they believe that the officials who discussed Plame were not trying to expose her, but were using the information as a tool to try to persuade reporters to ignore Wilson. The officials wanted to convince the reporters that he had benefited from nepotism in being chosen for the mission.

What started as political gossip and damage control has become a major criminal investigation that has already harmed the administration and could be a problem for President Bush for months to come.

One reason investigators are looking back is that even before Novak's column appeared, government officials had been trying for more than a month to convince journalists that Wilson's mission was not as important as it was being portrayed. Wilson concluded during the 2002 mission that there was no solid evidence for the administration's assertion that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in Niger to develop nuclear weapons, and he angered the White House when he became an outspoken critic of the war.

The FBI is trying to determine when White House officials and members of the vice president's staff first focused on Wilson and learned about his wife's employment at the agency. One group that may have known of the connection before that time is the handful of CIA officers detailed to the White House, where they work primarily on the National Security Council staff. A former NSC staff member said one or more of those officers may have been aware of the Plame-Wilson relationship. . . .

The first public mention of Wilson's mission to Niger, albeit without identifying him by name, was in the New York Times on May 6, in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof. Kristof had been on a panel with Wilson four days earlier, when the former ambassador said State Department officials should know better than to say the United States had been duped by forged documents that allegedly had proved a deal for the uranium had been in the works between Iraq and Niger.

Wilson said he told Kristof about his trip to Niger on the condition that Kristof must keep his name out of the column. When the column appeared, it created little public stir, though it set a number of reporters on the trail of the anonymous former ambassador. Kristof confirmed that account.

The column mentioned the alleged role of the vice president's office for the first time. That was when Cheney aides became aware of Wilson's mission and they began asking questions about him within the government, according to an administration official.

In the meantime, Wilson was pressing his case. He briefed two congressional committees conducting inquiries into why the president had mentioned the uranium allegation in his Jan. 28 State of the Union address. He also began making frequent television appearances.

In early June, Wilson told his story to The Washington Post on the condition that his name be withheld. On June 12, The Post published a more complete account than Kristof's of Wilson's trip. Wilson has now given permission to The Post to identify him as one source for that article.

By that time, officials in the White House, Cheney's office, the CIA and the State Department were familiar with Wilson and his mission to Niger.

Starting that week, the officials repeatedly played down the importance of Wilson's trip and its findings, saying it had been authorized within the CIA's nonproliferation section at a low level without requiring the approval of senior agency officials. No one brought up Wilson's wife, and her employment at the agency was not known at the time the article was published. . . .

On July 6, Wilson went public. In an interview published in The Post, Wilson accused the administration of "misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war." In an opinion article the same day in the New York Times, he wrote that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." . . .

That same week, two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to least six Washington journalists, an administration official told The Post for an article published Sept. 28. The source elaborated on the conversations last week, saying that officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson.

"It was unsolicited," the source said. "They were pushing back. They used everything they had."

Novak has said he began interviewing Bush officials about Wilson shortly after July 6, asking why such an outspoken Bush policy critic was picked for the Niger mission. Novak reported that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction and that she was the person who suggested Wilson for the job.

Officials have said Wilson, a former ambassador to Gabon and National Security Council senior director for African affairs, was not chosen because of his wife.

On July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame's name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report.

After Novak's column appeared, several high-profile reporters told Wilson that they had received calls from White House officials drawing attention to his wife's role. Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said she received one of those calls.

Wilson said another reporter called him on July 21 and said he had just hung up with Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove. The reporter quoted Rove as describing Wilson's wife as "fair game," Wilson said. Newsweek has identified that reporter as MSNBC television host Chris Matthews. Spokespeople said Matthews was unavailable for comment.

McClellan, the White House spokesman, has denied that Rove was involved in leaking classified material but has refused to discuss the possibility of a campaign to call attention to the revelations in Novak's column.

"America Returns to UN for Support over Iraq as EU Rebuffs Cash Pleas" -- Stephen Castle and Andrew Buncombe in The Independent, 10/14/03:

In an effort to secure financial and military support for its occupation of Iraq, the United States has proposed a deadline of mid December for the country's Governing Council to draw up a timetable for elections and a new constitution.

A new draft resolution circulated by the US to members of the United Nations Security Council also contains language that emphasises the importance of Iraqi representatives on the Council in helping the transition. But the concessions stop short of guaranteeing a central role for the UN in the future of the country.

The new resolution, on which the US could seek a vote as early as today, is the latest effort by Washington to secure international support ? money and troops ? for the ongoing occupation and reconstruction. Earlier drafts were criticised by many European countries that want the UN to have a more central role and a timetable outlining a prompt handover of power to Iraqis.

America's difficulty in obtain-ing this support was underlined yesterday in Luxembourg, where Britain was alone in pledging an additional ?375m (?264m). With time running out before a donor conference on Iraqi reconstruction next week, the US ? and its co-sponsors, the UK and Spain ? hope the resolution will persuade more countries to contribute. But in the absence of an agreement, EU countries rebuffed British requests to put cash on the table at a foreign ministers' meeting yesterday. Several countries that are certain to provide cash, such as Italy and Spain, declined to show their hand.

"Put the Patriot Act to Good Use -- on the White House Leak" -- Dante Chinni in The Christian Science Monitor, 10/14/03:

WASHINGTON ? Pity President Bush. He may be the most powerful man on earth, running the most disciplined White House in recent memory, but when it comes to finding the source of the leak that has this town buzzing, he's as helpless as the rest of us, he says.

All he knows, he says, is what we know. Sometime in July two "senior administration officials" called a half-dozen journalists and leaked to them the identity of an undercover CIA officer. One, columnist Robert Novak, ran with the story and made that identity known to the public at large. For a public official to leak this information, it turns out, is a violation of federal law, and now the CIA is angry and the Justice Department is investigating.

The president is reportedly furious over the news. He hates leaks and wants to find out the source, he says, but his hands are tied. Without the reporters revealing who their source was, he's not sure the leaker will ever be found. "This is a large administration," he told reporters last week with a chuckle. . . .

How to find such a person? It turns out, the administration may have an ally in its hunt. The Patriot Act, the anti terrorism law this administration has fought for and defended, could be used. Viet Dinh, a former assistant attorney general and one of the act's architects, says, "The normal investigative tools contained in Title II of the act may well apply to a leak investigation, such as the voice mail subpoena authority or perhaps the electronic trap and trace authority." The question, he says, is whether the facts of the case will prompt its use.

Of course, the law has already been used in several cases that have nothing to do with terrorism - from white-collar crime to blackmail. All of which suggests that even if you don't like the Patriot Act (and many on the right and the left don't) it's hard to argue against its being used here.

This is a test for the Justice Department and this administration as a whole. Over the past decade, as the Clinton scandals swirled in this town, there has been one consistent theme: Denials aren't enough. Accusations demand investigation. If that was true in the case of an Arkansas landdeal gone bad, it is doubly true here, where the stakes are higher - the CIA officer is home, but the network of contacts she established is potentially compromised.

The president has run a tight ship for three years. His staff has been loyal and on message. If leaks really aren't to be tolerated, he has to do more than throw his hands in the air and say, "The press won't tell me." He needs to push the investigation further - no matter where it leads.

"Studies: 383,000 Missing Votes in Recall, Most in Punch Cards" -- AP story in USA Today, 10/10/03:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- More than 380,000 ballots cast in the recall election did not have a valid vote on whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis, and most of them were made on punch card systems, according to two independent studies.

Even if the 4.6% of Californians whose ballots did not answer the recall question had voted against it, Davis would have lost. The recall passed by a margin of 10.8%, and Republican actor Arnold Schwarzenegger enjoyed a comfortable victory.

But California's anomalies could resonate nationwide, as counties scramble to modernize election equipment to qualify for federal funding in the 2002 Help America Vote Act.

In Los Angeles County, nearly 9% of people who cast ballots on punch card voting machines -- more than 175,000 ballots -- did not register a vote on whether to recall Davis, researchers said.

Voters either abstained from the recall question or disqualified their selection by voting both "yes" and "no."

"It's inconceivable that one in 11 people in Los Angeles went to the polls and did not cast a vote on the recall," said Henry E. Brady, professor of political science and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted one study.

By contrast, almost every response to the recall counted in Alameda County, which uses an electronic touch-screen system. The 0.7% of countywide responses without an answer to the recall question were likely cast by absentee ballot using the optical scan method, said Alameda County assistant registrar Elaine Ginnold.

Harvard University research fellow Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, who conducted the other study, concluded that many of the 383,000 ballots that didn't answer the recall question had their selections erased by malfunctioning machines.

Alfie Charles, vice president of business development at Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems, which prints the punch cards for Votomatic machines, said the suggestion the machines were broken was "so far off base it has no credibility whatsoever."

"Some people clearly want to abstain to express their opinion," Charles said. "It's dangerous territory to analyze those numbers." . . .

The number of residual votes on punch card machines totaled 297,775, or 6.3% of the votes; the total on optical scan machines was 72,190, or 2.7%; and the total for touch screen machines was 13,181, or 1.5%. . . .

"They were playing with fire in this election, and it's a good thing the margins weren't close," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California. "I hope this puts to rest claims that these (punch card) machines have any place in a democracy."

"All the President's Votes?" -- Andrew Gumbel in The Independent, 10/13/03 (reproduced at commondreams.org):

Last November . . . [Georgia] became the first in the country to conduct an election entirely with touchscreen voting machines, after lavishing $54m (?33m) on a new system that promised to deliver the securest, most up-to-date, most voter-friendly election in the history of the republic. The machines, however, turned out to be anything but reliable. With academic studies showing the Georgia touchscreens to be poorly programmed, full of security holes and prone to tampering, and with thousands of similar machines from different companies being introduced at high speed across the country, computer voting may, in fact, be US democracy's own 21st-century nightmare.

Harpers Weekly Review, 9/2/03

"Powell and Joint Chiefs Nudged Bush Toward U.N." -- Dana Milbank and Thomas E. Ricks in The Washington Post, 9/4/03:

On Tuesday, President Bush's first day back in the West Wing after a month at his ranch, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell walked into the Oval Office to present something close to a fait accompli.

In what was billed as a routine session, Powell told Bush that they had to go to the United Nations with a resolution seeking a U.N.-sanctioned military force in Iraq -- something the administration had resisted for nearly five months. Powell, whose department had long favored such an action, informed the commander in chief that the military brass supported the State Department's position despite resistance by the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, whose office had been slow to embrace the U.N. resolution, quickly agreed, according to administration officials who described the episode.

Thus was a long and high-stakes bureaucratic struggle resolved, with the combined clout of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department persuading a reluctant White House that the administration's Iraq occupation policy, devised by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, simply was not working.

The effort by Powell and the military began with a tête-á-tête in Qatar on July 27 between the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was furthered in a discussion between the Joint Chiefs chairman and Bush at the president's ranch on Aug. 8. And it was cemented in the past 10 days after Powell's deputy, Richard L. Armitage, went public with the proposal.

For an administration that prides itself on centralized, top-down control, the decision to change course in Iraq was uncharacteristically loose and decentralized. As described by officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon, the White House was the last to sign on to the new approach devised by the soldiers and the diplomats. "The [Pentagon] civilians had been saying we didn't need any more troops, and the military brass had backed them," a senior administration official said. "Powell's a smart guy, and he knew that as soon as he had the brass behind him, that is very tough to ignore." . . .

A diplomat at the United Nations who closely followed the evolution of the U.S. position said the "spark" for this week's decision was a meeting between Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan at the United Nations on Aug. 21, two days after the car-bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. The diplomat said Annan made it clear in that meeting that "the best feasible option was a multinational force under U.S. command," a notion that Powell believed he could sell in part because of the turn of events in Iraq. The idea of a U.S.-led multinational coalition with a U.N. mandate was broached publicly for the first time on Aug. 26 by Deputy Secretary of State Armitage.

The White House was taken by surprise. "The floating of this idea was not expected by the White House," a senior administration official said. "It is very rare that an idea catches the White House by surprise, then is so quickly adopted." . . .

People close to the administration said the Joint Chiefs and Powell (a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs) did not win a bureaucratic battle as much as Rumsfeld lost one. "Rumsfeld lost credibility with the White House because he screwed up the postwar planning," said William Kristol, a conservative publisher with close ties to the administration. "For five months they let Rumsfeld have his way, and for five months Rumsfeld said everything's fine. He wanted to do the postwar with fewer troops than a lot of people advised, and it turned out to be a mistake."

Pentagon spokesmen said there would be no official Defense Department comment for this report.

"EPA Duo Land Private Jobs" -- Seth Borenstein in The St. Paul Pioneer Press, 9/4/03:

WASHINGTON Two top Environmental Protection Agency officials who were involved deeply in easing an air-pollution rule for old power plants just took private-sector jobs with firms that benefit from the changes.

Days after the changes in the power-plant pollution rule were announced last week, John Pemberton, the chief of staff in the EPA's air and radiation office, told colleagues he would be joining Southern Co., an Atlanta-based utility that's the nation's No. 2 power-plant polluter and was a driving force in lobbying for the rule changes. Southern Co., which gave more than $3.4 million in political contributions over the past four years while it sought the changes, hired Pemberton as director of federal affairs.

Ed Krenik, who had been the EPA's associate administrator for congressional affairs, started work Tuesday at Bracewell & Patterson, a top Houston-based law firm that coordinated lobbying for several utilities on easing the power-plant pollution rule.

The firm's Washington office also served as home base and shares staff with the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which was created by several utilities, including Southern Co., to be the public voice favoring the rule changes the EPA just enacted.

EPA chief spokeswoman Lisa Harrison said neither Pemberton nor Krenik played a major role in the rule changes, which allow more than 500 older power plants to upgrade without adding pollution-control devices. She said Pemberton "played a minimal role on (the rule change) in the past 2� years."

Krenik said he had nothing to do with writing the rule; his duties were confined to selling it on Capitol Hill, where he has been promoting it for months.

"If I was the person writing the rule, I would say you might have something to say about conflict," Krenik said.

But others who are knowledgeable about the rule change said both men were key. Pemberton was one of three top people involved, said Bill Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Polluter Program Administrators, a Washington group that represents state and local air regulators.

"His role was significant and was huge," Becker said. "Pemberton was the guy behind the scenes that worked very closely on this rule."

One former EPA official in a Republican administration agreed, but spoke only on the condition that he not be identified. "I find it incredible" to hear that Pemberton played only a minimal role, the official said.

"Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds " -- Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane in The Washington Post, 9/6/03:

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents. . . .

In follow-up interviews, poll respondents were generally unsure why they believed Hussein was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, often describing it as an instinct that came from news reports and their long-standing views of Hussein. For example, Peter Bankers, 59, a New York film publicist, figures his belief that Hussein was behind the attacks "has probably been fed to me in some PR way," but he doesn't know how. "I think that the whole group of people, those with anti-American feelings, they all kind of cooperated with each other," he said.

Similarly, Kim Morrison, 32, a teacher from Plymouth, Ind., described her belief in Hussein's guilt as a "gut feeling" shaped by television. "From what we've heard from the media, it seems like what they feel is that Saddam and the whole al Qaeda thing are connected," she said. . . .

The Post poll, conducted Aug. 7-11, found that 62 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independents suspected a link between Hussein and 9/11. In addition, eight in 10 Americans said it was likely that Hussein had provided assistance to al Qaeda, and a similar proportion suspected he had developed weapons of mass destruction.

Harpers Weekly Review, 9/9/03

"France and Germany Seek Full UN Control over Iraq" -- Patrick Wintour in The Guardian, 9/10/03:

France and Germany will back the new UN resolution on Iraq sought by President George Bush only if the proposal gives the UN full political rule over the country.

The countries have also demanded a clear programme for returning power to Iraqis.

The high price sought by the French suggests that Mr Bush is going to struggle to win UN agreement ahead of his planned speech to the security council on September 24. Foreign ministers of the five permanent members are due to meet the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, in Geneva this weekend to try to find common ground.

Paris wants the UN to run Iraq temporarily on the model of Afghanistan, but insists its proposals do not represent an attempt to settle scores over the unilateral action by the US and Britain in Iraq.

France and Germany will accept the authority of the 25-strong governing council of Iraq, even though its membership was largely handpicked by the Anglo-US provisional authority. France believes the handover needs to be quick since many Iraqis fail to distinguish between US and UN control of the country.

Mr Bush has already tabled a draft resolution to leave US in full control of the coalition military, and give the UN only limited authority.

French sources insist they will approach the talks constructively, and not attempt to humiliate the US over its inability to restore order after the invasion. . . .

[France] remains sceptical of the idea that Britain is wielding significant influence over the new conservative mood in Washington. It has been suggested that No 10 saw the draft US resolution only a couple of days before it was circulated to security council members.

France is also seeking greater UN control of Iraqi oil revenues.

"Bush Backers Fear Iraq's Political Effect" -- Dana Milbank in The Washington Post, 9/10/03:

Bush has not taken a question from reporters since Aug. 22. In those 18 days, escalating attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq led the administration to request another $87 billion and to reconsider its resistance to a United Nations force. Bush's Middle East peace plan has been tossed aside with the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and a resumption of killings, including two suicide bombings in Israel today. Meanwhile, reports have shown the economy losing jobs and the 2004 federal deficit approaching $600 billion.

"Goodbye to All That" -- John Cassidy in The New Yorker, 9/15/03 (posted online 8/8/03):

What impact do budget deficits have on the economy? Many people assume that all deficits are bad, but that's not necessarily true. In an economic downturn, when taxpayers get laid off and social expenditures rise, deficit spending can actually be helpful. Even during a period of economic expansion, the government can sensibly decide to run a modest deficit in order to finance education, scientific research, and other areas that the private sector refuses to invest in. Deficits are dangerous when they are used to finance unproductive schemes (such as tax cuts for the rich), and when there's no end in sight. Investors tend to be wary of such deficits, and demand a higher return for lending their money to the government concerned. The result is that interest rates generally rise, which rattles the stock market and chokes off spending by consumers and firms.

The Bush deficit satisfies all the requirements for a dangerous deficit. It is big and wasteful, and isn't even an efficient way of stimulating the economy, since the wealthy tend to hoard their tax savings rather than spend them. Moreover, the deficit won?t disappear even when the economy is growing steadily. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international research group, the so-called "structural budget balance," which strips out the impact of the cycle, has gone from a surplus of 0.9 per cent of G.D.P. in 2000 to a deficit of four per cent of G.D.P. in 2003.

It's a figure that's likely to increase. Many of the Bush Administration's giveaways, such as the cut in dividend taxes and the abolition of the estate tax, are "back-loaded," which means the really big handouts won't get distributed until 2008, or later. As it happens, 2008 is also the year that the aging of the population will start to deplete the Treasury. In 2008, the first boomers will be able to pick up their Social Security checks; three years later, they will become eligible for Medicare. Unless the retirement programs are reformed (and there's little sign of that happening), the aging of the boomers will have a crushing effect on the federal government's finances.

"Repeal All Bush's Tax Cuts" -- Timothy Noah at slate.com, 9/11/03

"House Broken" -- Matthew Yglesias at The American Prospect Online, 9/10/03:

Throughout the Bush recession and the ensuing jobless recovery, the one consistent source of good economic news has been from the housing market. The value of the average home increased 6.48 percent in the 12-month period ending on March 31, and it is up a hefty 38.04 percent over the past five years. This continuing strength has given homeowners a cushion in the value of their assets during an era of declining stock portfolios. It has also provided construction jobs during a catastrophic period for employment in the manufacturing sector.

This has been good news for families who own homes. But the millions of Americans who rent their homes -- a disproportionately poor, disproportionately young group -- face an increasingly bleak situation. A new report released Monday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) reveals that the national housing wage (the amount of money per hour a full-time worker would need to make in order to rent a two-bedroom apartment on less than 30 percent of his or her income) for 2003 stands at $15.21, a 3.75 percent increase over 2002. Overall, the housing wage has increased 37 percent since the coalition began collecting comprehensive data in 1999.

The report comes out just four days after members of the Senate Appropriations Committee joined their House colleagues in endorsing the Bush administration's request to cut funding for the housing vouchers program -- the federal government's main means of addressing the issue -- by providing $900 million less than the Congressional Budget Office estimates will be necessary to continue the program at its current level.

As a result, more than 100,000 vouchers authorized by current law will go unfunded in the coming year. This will swell the ranks of the roughly 5 million households that, according to the most recent census data, must choose between spending more than half their incomes in rent and utilities or living in seriously substandard accommodations.

"Dizzying Dive to Red Ink Poses Stark Choices for Washington" -- David Firestone in The New York Times, 9/14/03:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 -- When President Bush informed the nation last Sunday night that remaining in Iraq next year will cost another $87 billion, many of those who will actually pay that bill were unable to watch. They had already been put to bed by their parents.

Administration officials acknowledged the next day that every dollar of that cost will be borrowed, a loan that economists say will be repaid by the next generation of taxpayers and the generation after that. The $166 billion cost of the work so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has stunned many in Washington, will be added to what was already the largest budget deficit the nation has ever known. . . .

The budget was upended by what economists now say were three independent forces gathering in power at once: a steep economic decline, a political consensus to slash taxes and the effects of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The surplus disappeared, replaced the next year with a budget deficit that has since grown to a record size. The $5.6 trillion surplus once predicted for the 10 years ending in 2011 is now a $2.3 trillion cumulative deficit under the best-case prediction issued by the Congressional Budget Office two weeks ago.

The $8 trillion difference between those numbers has little precedent in American history. The long-term budget forecast has declined as much in the last two years as the total revenue collected by the United States government from 1789 to 1983. . . .

The current fiscal year, which ends this month, was supposed to have ended with a surplus of $353 billion, the Congressional Budget Office predicted two years ago; today, the office says the year will end in a $401 billion deficit. Next year's deficit was projected to be $480 billion, but the new Iraq spending will bring that to $540 billion or higher -- close to the 5 percent of the gross domestic product that many experts warn is a serious danger zone for the economy. . . .

This course prompted the Congressional Budget Office to issue an unusual warning in its forecast last month: If Congressional Republicans and the administration get their wish and extend all the tax cuts now scheduled to expire, and if they pass a limited prescription drug benefit for Medicare and keep spending at its current level, the deficit by 2013 will have built up to $6.2 trillion. Once the baby boomers begin retiring at the end of this decade, the office said, that course will lead either to drastically higher taxes, severe spending cuts or "unsustainable levels of debt."

The long-term effect of the budget's imbalance was the reason the deficit was the leading concern in a survey of economists last month by the National Association for Business Economics, topping even unemployment. Deficits can be useful in stimulating a lethargic economy, but if they persist for years, they could push up interest rates and impose huge costs on Social Security and Medicare at precisely the moment that the baby boom generation will begin expecting its retirement benefits. The Committee for Economic Development, a group of business executives, warned earlier this year that persistent deficits could lead, for the first time in the nation's history, to a lower living standard for future generations. . . .

Economists in and out of government have begun studying the budget's plunge as a significant phenomenon in financial history, and reject the partisan contentions in Washington that the deficit can be blamed on any single factor, like the tax cuts or the 9/11 attacks. The biggest reason for this year's deficit, they say, has been the recession, while the tax cuts and military-related spending will have a much greater effect on the long-term deficit. Tax cuts alone will grow from 26 percent to 44 percent of the decline in 2011, according to the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center. What has been remarkable, economists say, is that all three forces combined at once beginning in 2001 to utterly change the government's financial outlook.

"Everyman, with a Voice" -- Peter Guralnick in The New York Times, 9/14/03:

John Cash ("Johnny" was Sam Phillips's bow to the marketplace) grew up in the federal "colony" of Dyess, Ark., "a social experiment with a socialist set-up, really," as Cash described it, "that was done by President Roosevelt for farmers that had lost out during the Depression." One of his most vivid memories of Dyess was the day that Eleanor Roosevelt came to town to dedicate the library, a momentous occasion not simply for the glimpse it afforded of Mrs. Roosevelt but for the opportunity it subsequently afforded him to indulge in what would become a lifelong passion for reading. He read James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott in particular at that time, and everything he could find on the American Indian ? not so much to escape as in the spirit of discovery. And he carried this exploratory spirit with him into the world, a world in which he achieved a degree of celebrity and fame far beyond anything that he might ever have imagined, and long past the point that most people would gladly have settled for the simple definition of success.

Harpers Weekly Review, 9/16/03

"US Vetoes UN Arafat Resolution" -- BBC, 9/17/03:

The United States has vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council denouncing Israel's decision to "remove" the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte said the resolution was "flawed" because it did not include a "robust condemnation of acts of terrorism".

The draft resolution, backed by Arab states, demanded that Israel "desist from any act of deportation and cease any threat to the safety of the elected president of the Palestinian Authority".

It followed a statement by Israel's security cabinet last week denouncing Mr Arafat as an "obstacle to peace" and saying he should be removed - although the cabinet did not say how or when it would do so.

And at the weekend Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert added that his government had not ruled out killing Mr Arafat. . . .

The US was the only one of the 15 countries on the Security Council to oppose the resolution.

"Saudis Consider Nuclear Bomb" -- Ewen MacAskill and Ian Traynor in The Guardian, 9/18/03:

Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned.

This new threat of proliferation in one of the most dangerous regions of the world comes on top of a crisis over Iran's alleged nuclear programme. . . .

United Nations officials and nuclear arms analysts said the Saudi review reflected profound insecurities generated by the volatility in the Middle East, Riyadh's estrangement with Washington and the weakening of its reliance on the US nuclear umbrella.

They pointed to the Saudi worries about an Iranian prog-ramme and to the absence of any international pressure on Israel, which has an estimated 200 nuclear devices.

"Our antennae are up," said a senior UN official watching worldwide nuclear proliferation efforts. "The international community can rest assured we do keep track of such events if they go beyond talk."

Saudi Arabia does not regard Iran, a past adversary with which Riyadh has restored relations, as a direct threat. But it is unnerved by the possibility of Iran and Israel having nuclear weapons.

Riyadh is also worried about a string of apparent leaks in American papers from the US administration critical of Saudi Arabia.

"Truth: Too Little of It on Iraq" -- editorial, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 9/17/03:

Dick Cheney is not a public relations man for the Bush administration, not a spinmeister nor a political operative. He's the vice president of the United States, and when he speaks in public, which he rarely does, he owes the American public the truth.

In his appearance on "Meet the Press" Sunday, Cheney fell woefully short of truth. On the subject of Iraq, the same can be said for President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. But Cheney is the latest example of administration mendacity, and therefore a good place to start in holding the administration accountable. . . .

To explore every phony statement in the vice president's "Meet the Press" interview would take far more space than is available. This merely points out some of the most egregious examples. Opponents of the war are fond of saying that "Bush lied and our soldiers died." In fact, they'd have reason to assert that "Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lied and our soldiers died." It's past time the principals behind this mismanaged war were called to account for their deliberate misstatements.

"Cheney's Conflict with the Truth" -- Derrick Z. Jackson in The Boston Globe, 9/19/03:

ON "MEET THE PRESS" last Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now, for over three years."

That is the latest White House lie.

Within 48 hours, Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey pointed reporters toward Cheney's public financial disclosure sheets filed with the US Office of Government Ethics. The sheets show that in 2002, Cheney received $162,392 in deferred salary from Halliburton, the oil and military contracting company he ran before running for vice president. In 2001, Cheney received $205,298 in deferred salary from Halliburton.

The 2001 salary was more than Cheney's vice presidential salary of $198,600. Cheney also is still holding 433,333 stock options. . . .

Five years ago, America was in a tizzy over President Clinton's "That depends on what the meaning of is, is." That was over lying about sex. For that, Clinton was impeached. Now, we have a vice president who tells America he has severed his ties even as his umbilical cord doubles his salary. To him, it depends what the meaning of i$, i$.

We know what the meaning of i$, i$ to Halliburton. It is by far the largest beneficiary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. With no-bid, no-ceiling contracts, the company has already amassed $2 billion in work. It is doing everything from restoring oil facilities to providing toilets for troops. A year ago Halliburton was staring at nearly a half-billion dollars in losses. In the second quarter of 2003 it posted a profit of $26 million.

Clinton will be forever tarnished for "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Dick Cheney's continuing salary from the top profiteer of an invasion fueled by his sexed-up claims of Saddam Hussein's weapons is the creation of a new, mad reality. Cheney has said in so many words, "I did not have financial relations with Halliburton." Americans must determine whether that lie is as sexy as lies about sex. With nearly 300 American soldiers dead, one would hope so.

"Mistakes of Vietnam Repeated with Iraq" -- Max Cleland in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/18/03:

Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. . . .

Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of the above happened, the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense have gotten this country into a disaster in the desert.

They attacked a country that had not attacked us. They did so on intelligence that was faulty, misrepresented and highly questionable.

A key piece of that intelligence was an outright lie that the White House put into the president's State of the Union speech. These officials have overextended the American military, including the National Guard and the Reserve, and have expanded the U.S. Army to the breaking point.

A quarter of a million troops are committed to the Iraq war theater, most of them bogged down in Baghdad. Morale is declining and casualties continue to increase.

In addition to the human cost, the war in dollars costs $1 billion a week, adding to the additional burden of an already depressed economy.

The president has declared "major combat over" and sent a message to every terrorist, "Bring them on." As a result, he has lost more people in his war than his father did in his and there is no end in sight.

Military commanders are left with extended tours of duty for servicemen and women who were told long ago they were going home. We are keeping American forces on the ground, where they have become sitting ducks in a shooting gallery for every terrorist in the Middle East.

Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance.

"Raw Data: Text of Bush Interview" with Brit Hume -- foxnews.com, 9/22/03:

[HUME:] Let me start off talking about Iraq. A few weeks back, when these terrorists began to appear on the scene evidently from outside, you said, "Bring 'em on." What did you mean by that?

BUSH: Well, I was really talking to our troops. I was saying to our troops in the theater that some in the region felt like they could come and take you on. Some felt like -- some terrorists, that is -- felt like they could beat us. And my point was we're plenty tough and we will take them on there.

They've chosen to fight. They, being al Qaeda types, Ansar Islam types, terrorist groups have chosen to fight American and coalition forces in Iraq. And we are prepared to battle, and we will. . . .

HUME: There are people who suggest that, look, you wouldn't have to be dealing with these people at all if you hadn't gone into Iraq. That these, in some sense, are newly recruited or newly minted terrorists. What's your view of that?

BUSH: That's probably the same type of person that says that therapy would work in convincing terrorists not to kill innocent life. There is a terrorist network that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001 that is active, that is engaged, that is trying to intimidate the civilized and free world. And this country will continue to lead a coalition against them. You know, there is -- in my judgment, the only way to deal with these terrorists is to stay on the offensive, is to find them and bring them to justice before they hurt us again.

HUME: What is your theory about what Saddam Hussein did with his weapons of mass destruction?

BUSH: I think he hid them, I think he dispersed them. I think he is so adapted at deceiving the civilized world for a long period of time that it's going to take a while for the troops to unravel. But I firmly believe he had weapons of mass destruction. I know he used them at one time, and I'm confident he had programs that would enable him to have a weapon of mass destruction at his disposal. . . .

HUME: How do you get your news?

BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you've got a beautiful face and everything.

I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.

HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you've...

BUSH: Practice since day one.

HUME: Really?

BUSH: Yes. You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news. And I...

HUME: I won't disagree with that, sir.

BUSH: I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.

HUME: Mr. President, thank you very much.

BUSH: Thank you, sir.

Harpers Weekly Review, 9/23/03

"Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry" -- Mike Allen and Dana Priest in The Washington Post, 9/28/03:

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

The officer's name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials.

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility. They alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."

A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as "fair game."

The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said there was no indication that Bush knew about the calls.

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. Wilson said Aug. 21 at a public forum in suburban Seattle that it is of keen interest to him "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

"Bush Aides Say They'll Cooperate with Probe into Intelligence Leak" -- Mike Allen in The Washington Post, 9/29/03

"Does a Felon Rove the White House?" -- Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill, 9/30/03, at commondreams.org:

Vice President Dick Cheney's only public comments on Joe Wilson have been when questioned on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, "I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson" and "I have no idea who hired him."

Cheney's comments strain credulity.

While technically he may have never met Wilson, the investigation into Niger was done at the request of the vice president's office. Surely, Mr. Cheney learned of this, if not before the request was made, then after, when, as the Washington Post revealed, Cheney traveled repeatedly to the CIA during 2002.

"This is not unusual. This is unprecedented," retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Democracy Now! "The Vice President of the United States never during [my] 27 years came out to the CIA headquarters for a working visit.. this is like inviting money-changers into the temple."

While Cheney may not know Wilson, there is little doubt he knows of him. When Cheney was helping run the Persian Gulf War, as secretary of defense, Wilson was one of the key players. As the acting US ambassador on the ground in Baghdad in the weeks leading up to the war, the White House consulted Wilson daily. In those weeks, he was the only open line of communication between Washington and Saddam Hussein. Cheney was the Secretary of Defense at the time and a key player in the day-to-day operations and intelligence gathering. Furthermore, Wilson was formally commended by the Bush administration for his bravery and heroism in the weeks leading up to the war. In that time, Wilson helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, negotiated the release of more than 120 American hostages and sheltered nearly 800 Americans in the embassy compound.

"Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq," President Bush wrote Wilson in a letter. "The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job."

Wilson says that he heard from people who were at meetings chaired by Bush in the lead up to the Gulf War, "When people would come up with an idea, George Bush would often lean forward and ask them, 'What does Joe Wilson say about that? What does Joe Wilson think about that?' So at the highest level of our government there was keen interest in knowing what the field was saying and Dick Cheney was probably at those meetings."

What's Cheney hiding? What's the White House hiding?

There is a scandal brewing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that if treated properly by the Department of Justice and elected officials could prove to be one of the clearest cases of documentable criminal conduct and blatant lies by an administration since Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal.

"Baldwin vs. Patriot Act" -- Madison Capital Times editorial, 9/30/03:

U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, has joined 20 other members of the House - including Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-chairs Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee - to sponsor legislation that would repeal those components of the Patriot Act that threaten basic liberties.

"Secret surveillance, secret searches, denial of counsel, monitoring of conversations between citizens and their attorneys or searching library and medical records are not necessary to protect Americans," says Baldwin, in reference to the troublesome powers of the Patriot Act that would be addressed by the "Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act."

The legislation Baldwin and the others propose would also prevent abusive searches by the Justice Department of educational records, restore reasonable limits on the use of wiretaps, and ensure that definitions of terrorism are not written so broadly that they would allow Ashcroft and his lieutenants to restrict legitimate political expression and activism in the United States.

In addition, it would force the federal government to follow basic legal standards when jailing people, seeking deportations and limiting employment options for noncitizens.

Many legislative and legal attempts are now being made to address the worst excesses of the Patriot Act - including several developed by conservative Republicans.

The measure Baldwin and her allies are supporting is clearly the most comprehensive legislation in this area, and it deserves quick attention from the House Judiciary Committee and broad support in the House as a whole.

However, after reading through the legislation's long list of legitimate complains about the Patriot Act's excesses, we are left with a question: Why not simply eliminate the Patriot Act and start anew to draft legislation that allows government to address legitimate terrorist threats while at the same time protecting civil rights and civil liberties?

"28 Pages" -- John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman at
The New Republic Online, 8/1/03

Since the joint congressional committee investigating September 11 issued a
censored version of its report on July 24, there's been considerable speculation
about the 28 pages blanked out from the section entitled "Certain Sensitive
National Security Matters." The section cites "specific sources of foreign
support for some of the September 11 hijackers," which most commentators have
interpreted to mean Saudi contributions to Al Qaeda-linked charities. But an
official who has read the report tells The New Republic that the support
described in the report goes well beyond that: It involves connections between
the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. "There's a
lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone's chasing the charities," says
this official. "They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi
government. We're not talking about rogue elements. We're talking about a
coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in
the Saudi government." . . .

The Bush administration has insisted, again and again, that the war on terror
is its first priority. In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued, "The battle to secure the
peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the global war on terror." Wolfowitz
says this presumably because he still believes that Saddam Hussein's regime had
close ties with Al Qaeda. But it's looking more and more like the principal
theater in the war on terror lies elsewhere. The official who read the 28 pages
tells The New Republic, "If the people in the administration trying to link Iraq
to Al Qaeda had one-one-thousandth of the stuff that the 28 pages has linking a
foreign government to Al Qaeda, they would have been in good shape." He adds:
"If the 28 pages were to be made public, I have no question that the entire
relationship with Saudi Arabia would change overnight."

"Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies" -- James Risen and David Johnston in The New York Times, 8/2/03:

The classified part of a Congressional report on the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, says that two Saudi citizens who had at least indirect links with two hijackers were probably Saudi intelligence agents and may have reported to Saudi government officials, according to people who have seen the report.

These findings, according to several people who have read the report, help to explain why the classified part of the report has become so politically charged, causing strains between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Senior Saudi officials have denied any links between their government and the attacks and have asked that the section be declassified, but President Bush has refused.

People familiar with the report and who spoke on condition of not being named said that the two Saudi citizens, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, operated in a complex web of financial relationships with officials of the Saudi government. The sections that focus on them draw connections between the two men, two hijackers, and Saudi officials. . . .

Today, 46 Democratic senators asked that the deleted material be released, saying the national security issues Mr. Bush cited as the reason the material was classified could be addressed by careful editing. Republicans, including Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, a former Intelligence Committee chairman, have also called for its release.

Several Congressional officials familiar with the report say that only a small part of the classified section dealing with the specifics of F.B.I. counterintelligence and counterterrorism activities should remain classified. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said, "Keeping this material classified only strengthens the theory that some in the U.S. government are hellbent on covering up for the Saudis."

"Why Privatize National Parks?" -- Ruth Rosen in The San Francisco Chronicle, 8/4/03:

There may be a National Park Service employee who's testy, impatient or ignorant, but after decades of hiking in our national parks, I simply haven't met one. They always seem unfailingly gracious, eager to interpret the geologic landscape, dedicated to preserving the wilderness and, to put it mildly, madly in love with the natural world in which they work.

That's why I'm so appalled by the Bush administration's plan to privatize some 1,700 positions in the park service. Determined to run government like a corporation, eager to privatize and dismantle public services, the administration believes that private business could more cheaply do the same tasks now performed by some rangers and scientists, maintenance workers and other park employees.

In typical Bush doublespeak, money saved by replacing experienced park employees with privately contracted workers (paid lower wages and provided fewer benefits), would be used to "improve the parks."

Park employees, whose morale has been crushed by this policy, counter that replacement workers are unlikely to have the expertise or professionalism of career park service staff, who are highly skilled and cross-trained to assist each other with many different kinds of tasks.

Their opinion is shared by Bruce Babbitt and Stewart Udall, two Arizona Democrats who served as former secretaries of the Interior. Last week, they issued a scathing condemnation of the administration's proposal to privatize portions of the National Park Service and called the policy "radical," "reckless" and an "attempt to dismantle the National Park Service."

"What we would have is not national parks but amusement parks," said Bruce Babbitt, who served during two Clinton terms. Stuart Udall, who served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was equally indignant: "This is the first administration in the last century that is clearly, even admittedly, anti- conservation. I never thought I would see this. The national parks are not shopping malls to be privatized."

Some Republicans also find the idea repugnant. "There are times and places where competitive outsourcing is a good thing to do," said Craig Thomas, a Wyoming Republican and chairman of the Senate National Parks Subcommittee. "But we have to recognize the uniqueness and peculiarities of the park service. "

Right now, the House has attached a rider to the Interior funding bill that would block privatizing national parks jobs. In response, the White House, has threatened to veto the bill.

"Officials Confirm Dropping Firebombs on Iraqi Civilians" -- James W. Crawley in The San Diego Union-Tribune, 8/5/03:

American jets killed Iraqi troops with firebombs � similar to the controversial napalm used in the Vietnam War � in March and April as Marines battled toward Baghdad.

Marine Corps fighter pilots and commanders who have returned from the war zone have confirmed dropping dozens of incendiary bombs near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris River. The explosions created massive fireballs.

"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Col. James Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. "Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.

"They were Iraqi soldiers there. It's no great way to die," he added. How many Iraqis died, the military couldn't say. No accurate count has been made of Iraqi war casualties.

The bombing campaign helped clear the path for the Marines' race to Baghdad.

During the war, Pentagon spokesmen disputed reports that napalm was being used, saying the Pentagon's stockpile had been destroyed two years ago.

Apparently the spokesmen were drawing a distinction between the terms "firebomb" and "napalm." If reporters had asked about firebombs, officials said yesterday they would have confirmed their use.

What the Marines dropped, the spokesmen said yesterday, were "Mark 77 firebombs." They acknowledged those are incendiary devices with a function "remarkably similar" to napalm weapons.

Rather than using gasoline and benzene as the fuel, the firebombs use kerosene-based jet fuel, which has a smaller concentration of benzene.

Hundreds of partially loaded Mark 77 firebombs were stored on pre-positioned ammunition ships overseas, Marine Corps officials said. Those ships were unloaded in Kuwait during the weeks preceding the war.

"You can call it something other than napalm, but it's napalm," said John Pike, defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a nonpartisan research group in Alexandria, Va.

Although many human rights groups consider incendiary bombs to be inhumane, international law does not prohibit their use against military forces. The United States has not agreed to a ban against possible civilian targets.

"Incendiaries create burns that are difficult to treat," said Robert Musil, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a Washington group that opposes the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Musil described the Pentagon's distinction between napalm and Mark 77 firebombs as "pretty outrageous."

"That's clearly Orwellian," he added. . . .

During a recent interview about the bombing campaign in Iraq, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Jim Amos confirmed aircraft dropped what he and other Marines continue to call napalm on Iraqi troops on several occasions. He commanded Marine jet and helicopter units involved in the Iraq war and leads the Miramar-based 3rd Marine Air Wing.

Miramar pilots familiar with the bombing missions pointed to at least two locations where firebombs were dropped.

Before the Marines crossed the Saddam Canal in central Iraq, jets dropped several firebombs on enemy positions near a bridge that would become the Marines' main crossing point on the road toward Numaniyah, a key town 40 miles from Baghdad.

Next, the bombs were used against Iraqis near a key Tigris River bridge, north of Numaniyah, in early April.

There were reports of another attack on the first day of the war.

Two embedded journalists reported what they described as napalm being dropped on an Iraqi observation post at Safwan Hill overlooking the Kuwait border.

Reporters for CNN and the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald were told by unnamed Marine officers that aircraft dropped napalm on the Iraqi position, which was adjacent to one of the Marines' main invasion routes.

Their reports were disputed by several Pentagon spokesmen who said no such bombs were used nor did the United States have any napalm weapons.

"'A Form of Looting': Das Akerlof-Interview im englischen Orginal" -- interview with George Akerlof at Spiegel online, 7/29/03:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the government's just bad at doing the correct math?

Akerlof: There is a systematic reason. The government is not really telling the truth to the American people. Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: If so, why's the President still popular?

Akerlof: For some reason the American people does not yet recognize the dire consequences of our government budgets. It's my hope that voters are going to see how irresponsible this policy is and are going to respond in 2004 and we're going to see a reversal.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What if that doesn't happen?

Akerlof: Future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive public deficits and huge government debt. Then we have a choice. We can be like a very poor country with problems of threatening bankruptcy. Or we're going to have to cut back seriously on Medicare and Social Security. So the money that is going overwhelmingly to the wealthy is going to be paid by cutting services for the elderly. And people depend on those. It's only among the richest 40 percent that you begin to get households who have sizeable fractions of their own retirement income. . . .

SPIEGEL ONLINE: It seems that the current administration has politicised you in an unprecedented way. During the course of this year, you have, with other academics, signed two public declarations of protest. One against the tax cuts, the other against waging unilateral preventive war on Iraq.

Akerlof: I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of what kind?

Akerlof: I don't know yet. But I think it's time to protest - as much as possible.

Harpers Weekly Review, 8/5/03

Al Gore's speech to Moveon.org members at New York University, 8/7/03 (Moveon.org):

The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me -- not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy.

Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right. . . .

It seems obvious that big and important issues like the Bush economic policy and the first Pre-emptive War in U.S. history should have been debated more thoroughly in the Congress, covered more extensively in the news media, and better presented to the American people before our nation made such fateful choices. But that didn't happen, and in both cases, reality is turning out to be very different from the impression that was given when the votes -- and the die -- were cast.

Since this curious mismatch between myth and reality has suddenly become commonplace and is causing such extreme difficulty for the nation's ability to make good choices about our future, maybe it is time to focus on how in the world we could have gotten so many false impressions in such a short period of time. . . .

Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith, and we're all used to that. I've even been guilty of it myself on occasion. But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty.

Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that what the country is dealing with in the Bush Presidency is the latter. That is really the nub of the problem -- the common source for most of the false impressions that have been frustrating the normal and healthy workings of our democracy.

Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth.

The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas. . . .

Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals.

In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.

The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.

For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes.

Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action. What the administration offers with one hand is the rhetoric of compassion; what it takes away with the other hand are the financial resources necessary to make compassion something more than an empty and fading impression. . . .

If the 21st century is to be well started, we need a national agenda that is worked out in concert with the people, a healing agenda that is built on a true national consensus. Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a "healer, not a divider", a president devoted first and foremost to "honor and integrity." Yet far from uniting the people, the president's ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of 'civil cold war' against those with whom they disagree.

And as for honor and integrity, let me say this: we know what that was all about, but hear me well, not as a candidate for any office, but as an American citizen who loves my country:

For eight years, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave this nation honest budget numbers; an economic plan with integrity that rescued the nation from debt and stagnation; honest advocacy for the environment; real compassion for the poor; a strengthening of our military -- as recently proven -- and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued, in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it.

So I would say to those who have found the issue of honor and integrity so useful as a political tool, that the people are also looking for these virtues in the execution of public policy on their behalf, and will judge whether they are present or absent.

"Liberals Form Fund to Defeat President" -- Thomas B. Edsall in The Washington Post, 8/8/03:

Labor, environmental and women's organizations, with strong backing from international financier George Soros, have joined forces behind a new political group that plans to spend an unprecedented $75 million to mobilize voters to defeat President Bush in 2004.

The organization, Americans Coming Together (ACT), will conduct "a massive get-out-the-vote operation that we think will defeat George W. Bush in 2004," said Ellen Malcolm, the president of EMILY's List, who will become ACT's president.

ACT already has commitments for more than $30 million, Malcolm and others said, including $10 million from Soros, $12 million from six other philanthropists, and about $8 million from unions, including the Service Employees International Union. . . .

Other groups joining the fight against Bush include the American Majority Institute, which was put together by John Podesta, a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. The institute will function as a liberal counter to conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. A network of liberal groups has formed America Votes to coordinate the political activities of civil rights, environmental and abortion rights groups among others, and former Clinton aide Harold Ickes is trying to set up a pro-Democratic group to finance 2004 campaign television ads. . . .

Republicans sent a warning shot across ACT's bow. "We are going to be watching very closely to make sure they adhere to their claim that they will not be coordinating with the Democratic Party," said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson. Such coordination would violate campaign finance laws.

Iverson contended that ACT's financing indicates that "the Democrats are addicted to special-interest soft money and this allows them to feed that addiction by skirting the spirit of the new campaign finance law."

The shifting focus of Soros, who is worth $5 billion and is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, from the international sphere to the domestic political arena is considered significant.

In a statement describing his reasons for giving $10 million, Soros said, "I believe deeply in the values of an open society. For the past 15 years I have focused my energies on fighting for these values abroad. Now I am doing it in the United States. The fate of the world depends on the United States and President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction."

Steve Rosenthal, whose mobilization of union members from 1996 through 2002 has been widely praised, will be ACT's chief executive officer. He said that ACT will hire hundreds of organizers, state political directors and others as the 2004 election approaches.

ACT plans to concentrate its activities in 17 states, all of which are likely to be presidential battlegrounds: Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and West Virginia.

"Salt of the Earth" -- Paul Krugman in The New York Times, 8/8/03:

Before last year's elections Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, wrote a remarkable memo about how to neutralize public perceptions that the party was anti-environmental. Here's what it said about global warming: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science." And it advised Republicans to play up the appearance of scientific uncertainty.

But as a recent article in Salon reminds us, this appearance of uncertainty is "manufactured." Very few independent experts now dispute that manmade global warming is happening, and represents a serious threat. Almost all the skeptics are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries. And before you accuse me of a conspiracy theory, listen to what the other side says. Here's Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma: "Could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."

The point is that when it comes to evidence of danger from emissions -- as opposed to, say, Iraqi nukes -- the people now running our country won't take yes for an answer.

"Roughest Region" -- Christopher Dickey at msnbc.com, 8/7/03:

Since the troops stripped off their uniforms and walked home rather than face the American juggernaut in March and April, Iraq has no army at all of its own. This week, training began for the first 1,000 soldiers in a new Iraqi military. Two years from now, if all goes well, the United States plans for Iraq to have three motorized divisions totaling only about 40,000 troops -- and no air force to speak of.

So at a press conference this afternoon (in the merciful cool of Saddam's old convention center), I asked Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the 150,000 or so American and other Coalition forces here, if he thought the Iraqis could really feel secure with such a small force. He saw what I was getting at. "We look to be able to disengage as rapidly as possible and have Iraq stand up and be able to take care of [its own defense] over time," he said. But how much time would that be? More than two years? "At a minimum," said Sanchez, "an absolute minimum, we'll have to be here that long."

Sanchez knows better. We're here forever. The simple fact about the New Iraq is that never in our lifetimes will it be able to defend itself from its neighbors. It will always be dependent on the United States to do that job. And because it floats on oil, and because all its neighbors -- and all of us -- have a vital stake in its future, it's going to take a lot of defending. . . .

[O]f the six countries bordering Iraq, only Kuwait will have an army smaller than the one planned for Baghdad (15,400). On the other hand, Iran has some 520,000 people under arms (and may soon have nukes); Turkey has 515,000 (and a full-blown NATO arsenal); Syria has 319,000 (and chemical and biological weapons); Saudi Arabia has 200,000 (including its National Guard), and even little Jordan has 100,000. Not to mention nearby Israel, which has 161,000 soldiers on active duty, an enormous technological edge and, oh, yes, absolutely does have nuclear weapons.

"Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence" -- Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 8/10/03 (more debunking)

"Powell's Push toward Iraq War Questioned -- Charles J. Hanley (AP) in The Kansas City Star, 8/10/03 (a point-by-point dismantling of Powell's February 2003 case against Iraq).

Harpers Weekly Review, 8/12/03

"US Notches World's Highest Incarceration Rate" -- Gail Russell Chaddock in The Christian Science Monitor, 8/18/03:

WASHINGTON -- More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world.

It's the first time the US government has released estimates of the extent of imprisonment, and the report's statistics have broad implications for everything from state fiscal crises to how other nations view the American experience.

If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17. . . .

Justice Department analysts say that experts in criminal justice have long known of the stark disparities in prison experience, but they have never been as fully documented. By the end of year 2001, some 1,319,000 adults were confined in state or federal prisons. An estimated 4,299,000 former prisoners are still alive, the new report concludes.

"What we are seeing is a substantial involvement of the public in the criminal-justice system. It raises a lot of questions in the national dialogue on everything from voting and sentencing to priorities related to state's expenditures," says Allen Beck, chief of correction statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, who directed the report.

Nor does the impact of incarceration end with the sentence. Former inmates can be excluded from receiving public assistance, living in public housing, or receiving financial aid for college. Ex-felons are prohibited from voting in many states. And with the increased use of background checks - especially since 9/11 - they may be permanently locked out of jobs in many professions, including education, child care, driving a bus, or working in a nursing home. . . .

More than 4 million prisoners or former prisoners are denied a right to vote; in 12 states, that ban is for life.

"That's why racial profiling has become such a priority issue for African-Americans, because it is the gateway to just such a statistic," says Yvonne Scruggs- Leftwich, chief operating officer of the Black Leadership Forum, in Washington. "It means that large numbers in the African-American community are disenfranchised, sometimes permanently."

Some states are already scaling back prohibitions or limits on voting affecting former inmates, including Maryland, Delaware, New Mexico, and Texas.

In addition, critics say that efforts to purge voting rolls of former felons could lead to abuses, and effectively disenfranchise many minority voters.

"On the day of the 2000 [presidential] election, there were an estimated 600,000 former felons who had completed their sentence yet because of Florida's restrictive laws were unable to vote," says Mr. Mauer of the Sentencing Project.

The new report also informs - but does not settle - one of the toughest debates in American politics: whether high rates of imprisonment are related to a drop in crime rates over the past decade.

The prison population has quadrupled since 1980. Much of that surge is the result of public policy, such as the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing. Nearly 1 in 4 of the inmates in federal and state prisons are there because of drug-related offenses, most of them nonviolent. . . .

By 2010, the number of American residents in prison or with prison experience is expected to jump to 7.7 million, or 3.4 percent of all adults, according to the new report.

Harpers Weekly Review, 8/19/03

Harpers Weekly Review, 8/26/03

"US Attacked over UN Resolution" -- Greg Barrow at bbc.co.uk, 8/26/03:

US officials are objecting to a section of the resolution which refers to attacks on humanitarian workers as a war crime under the statutes of the newly-established International Criminal Court (ICC).

Washington does not recognise the court.

It also insists on either removing reference to it from UN resolutions or having paragraphs inserted that give immunity to nations like America that have not ratified the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.

Human rights groups are angry that less than a week after the attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad, the US is objecting to the draft UN resolution.

With emotions still running high in the aftermath, they now say Washington may have gone too far.

Human Rights Watch has accused the US of waging an ill-conceived and ideologically-driven crusade against the court and in the process, compromising efforts to protect aid workers.

"After the tragic killing of aid workers in Baghdad, the US opposition to the proposed resolution is disgraceful," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's international justice programme.

Other human rights groups argue that the court should be supported as it acts as a deterrent to those who might consider attacks on humanitarian workers.

"Beware the Bluewash" -- George Monbiot in The Guardian, 8/26/03:

The United Nations, almost all good liberals now argue, is a more legitimate force than the US and therefore more likely to succeed in overseeing Iraq's reconstruction and transition. If the US surrendered to the UN, this would, moreover, represent the dawning of a fairer, kinder world. These propositions are scarcely more credible than those coming out of the Pentagon.

The immediate and evident danger of a transition from US occupation to UN occupation is that the UN becomes the dustbin into which the US dumps its failed adventures. The American and British troops in Iraq do not deserve to die any more than the Indian or Turkish soldiers with whom they might be replaced. But the governments that sent them, rather than those that opposed the invasion, should be the ones that have to answer to their people for the consequences.

The vicious bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad last week suggests that the jihadis who now seem to be entering Iraq from every corner of the Muslim world will make little distinction between khaki helmets and blue ones. . . .

The UN will swiftly discover that occupation-lite is no more viable than occupation-heavy. Moreover, by replacing its troops, the despised UN could, in one of the supreme ironies of our time, provide the US government with the escape route it may require if George Bush is to win the next election. We can expect him, as soon as the soldiers have come home, to wash his hands not only of moral responsibility for the mess he has created, but also of the duty to help pay for the country's reconstruction. Most importantly, if the UN shows that it is prepared to mop up after him, it will enhance his incentive to take his perpetual war to other nations.

It should also be pretty obvious that, tough as it is for both the American troops and the Iraqis, pinned down in Iraq may be the safest place for the US army to be. The Pentagon remains reluctant to fight more than one war at a time. One of the reasons that it has tackled Iran and North Korea with diplomacy rather than missiles is that it has neither the soldiers nor the resources to launch an attack until it can disentangle itself from Iraq.

"Inside the Resistance" -- Paul McGeough in The Sidney Morning Herald, 8/15/03:

When he took up his commission in mid-July, the new US military chief in Iraq, General John Abizaid, acknowledged the rapid development of the resistance: "They're better co-ordinated now. They're less amateurish and their ability to use improvised explosive devices combined with tactical activity - say, for example, attacking [our] quick-reaction forces - is more sophisticated."

Washington has been reluctant to accept that what is happening in Iraq constitutes a guerilla war. It has repeatedly pinned the blame for instability on Saddam Hussein and Baath Party loyalists; and, particularly since last week's bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, on foreigners associated with the terrorist network al-Qaeda and its offshoots.

So it fell to Abizaid to finally acknowledge the Americans face a "classic guerilla-type campaign". But he, too, stuck to the Washington script, insisting the critical threat to the Americans was from "mid-level Baathists" and from an organisational and financial structure that was, at best, localised.

The Pentagon, the US military and American analysts are reluctant to acknowledge popular support for the Iraqi resistance. But the chaos has tribal sheiks, Baghdad businessmen and many ordinary Iraqis speaking in such harsh anti-American terms that it is hard not to conclude there is a growing body of Palestinian or Belfast-style empathy with the resistance.

If the accounts of the resistance given to the Herald in interviews in the past 10 days are accurate, US intelligence is way behind understanding that what is emerging in Iraq is a centrally controlled movement, driven as much by nationalism as the mosque, a movement that has left Saddam and the Baath Party behind and already is getting foreign funds for its bid to drive out the US army.

Iraq-Al Qaeda Propaganda, November 2001-March 2003 (silver.he.net)

Dubya's Resume (idontfeelsogood.blogspot.com)

"In Wal-Mart's America" -- Harold Meyerson in The Washington Post, 8/27/03:

[T]he employer that now sets the standards for working-class America is Wal-Mart. The nation's largest employer, with 3,200 outlets in the United States and sales revenue of $245 billion last year (which, if War-Mart were a nation, would rank it between Belgium and Sweden as the world's 19th largest economy) doesn't pay its workers -- excuse me, "associates" -- enough to buy decent cars, let alone homes. According to a study by Forbes, Wal-Mart employees earn an average hourly wage of $7.50 and, annually, a princely $18,000.

Just as Ford, GM and the UAW once drove up wages for workers who were nowhere near auto factories, so Wal-Mart drives down wages for workers who never set foot there. Controlling as it does so much of the low-end retail market, Wal-Mart has, with great success, pressured suppliers to cut their labor costs. No other American company has done as much to destroy what's left of the U.S. clothing and textile industry or been so loyal a friend to the dankest sweatshops of the developing world. And unless American unions can find the political leverage to block Wal-Mart's expansion into non-southern metropolitan areas, the company poses a huge threat to the million or so unionized clerks who work at the nation's major supermarket chains.

It may just be me, but I don't recall the moment when the American people proclaimed their preference for an economy driven by Wal-Mart to the one driven by General Motors. It is, after all, one thing to live in a nation where the largest employer wants workers to make enough to afford its cars; quite another to wake up in an America where the largest employer wants workers to make so little they'll be compelled to buy low-end goods in a discount chain. Indeed, polling has consistently showed that a clear majority of the American people have been dubious about the benefits of free trade -- but these are the only polls that the political elite, so poll-driven on other questions, has consistently ignored. By the same token, polling also shows that Americans believe workers should have the right to join unions free of intimidation, yet that has not been the case in the American workplace for at least the past three decades.

"Follow the Yellowcake Road" -- Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas in Newsweek, 7/28/03:

In an age when American policy is to strike first, before the enemy can strike the American homeland, intelligence needs to be very precise. In real life, it rarely is. Intelligence officials say they are careful to weigh and double-check tips and leads. But the behind-the-scenes story of the handling of the bogus documents about Saddam's attempts to buy uranium in Africa, pieced together by NEWSWEEK, does not present a reassuring picture.

The report from Italy's SISME -- that Iraq was trying to buy 500 tons of pure yellowcake uranium from Niger -- made it into the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. But the CIA did not bother to first examine the documents. An Italian journalist turned the papers over to the American Embassy in Rome that same month, but the CIA station chief in Rome apparently tossed them out, rather than send them to analysts at Langley. At a congressional hearing last week, the CIA's Tenet was unable to explain why. "The CIA dropped the ball," said Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois. (Incredibly, the Italian press, which doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory, appeared to have higher standards than the CIA. The Italian reporter, Elisabetta Burba, worked for Panorama, a weekly magazine owned by Italy's conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. She went to Niger and checked out the documents but declined to use them because she feared they were bufala -- fraudulent -- and she would lose her job.)

Tenet did have qualms about using the Niger information in a presidential speech. The DCI warned deputy national-security adviser Steve Hadley not to include a reference to Niger in a speech delivered by President Bush on Oct. 7 in Cincinnati. But according to a top CIA official, another member of the NSC staff, Bob Joseph, wanted to include a mention of Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Niger in the president's State of the Union speech. According to this CIA official, an agency analyst cautioned him not to include the Niger reference. The NSC man asked if it would be all right to cite a British intelligence report that the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium from several African countries. The CIA official acquiesced. Though the British have not backed off that claim (a British official told NEWSWEEK that it came from an East African nation, not Niger), CIA Director Tenet publicly took responsibility for allowing a thinly sourced report by another country to appear in the State of the Union. (The White House last week denied that the Niger reference had ever shown up in an SOTU draft.) What Bush said in his address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." . . .

It wasn't until February, several days after the State of the Union, that the CIA finally obtained the Italian documents (from the State Department, whose warnings that the intelligence on Niger was "highly dubious" seem to have gone unheeded by the White House and unread by Bush). At the same time, the State Department turned over the Italian documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which had been pressing the United States to back up its claims about Iraq's nuclear program. "Within two hours they figured out they were forgeries," one IAEA official told NEWSWEEK. How did they do it? "Google," said the official. The IAEA ran the name of the Niger foreign minister through the Internet search engine and discovered that he was not in office at the time the document was signed. The FBI is investigating the whole affair, NEWSWEEK has learned, trying to determine if the documents were just a con job by a diplomat looking for some extra cash or a more serious attempt by Iraqi nationals to plant a story. In any case, the FBI will be, in effect, investigating the CIA, a sure script for more acts in the long-playing production of Intelligence Follies.

"Antiwar Groups Say Public Ire Over Iraq Claims Is Increasing" -- Evelyn Nieves in The Washington Post, 7/22/03:

About 400,000 people from every state have contacted members of Congress in the past three weeks as part of a MoveOn.org petition that asks Congress to investigate the controversial claims that led to the war on Iraq, with more than 50,000 people signing on to the liberal activist Web site in the past five days alone.

"It seems more and more people who supported the war are signing on," said Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org's campaigns director. "They're angry. People who in the past couple of weeks before the war decided to support it are swinging back."

For organizations that opposed the war, these are busy days. Not since hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched in antiwar rallies in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion has the rationale for the preemptive war come under such fire. The groups hope to galvanize a broad spectrum of the American people, a majority of whom supported the war, but with reservations. The goal is to persuade public officials to support an independent, bipartisan commission modeled on the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the week since the administration admitted that President Bush's State of the Union speech in January should not have mentioned that the British had "learned" Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa for a nuclear weapons program, antiwar groups say that more and more Americans have been contacting them, looking for answers.

"You know an issue has momentum," said Andrea Buffa, co-chair of the United for Peace and Justice coalition, "when people are coming into your office to ask if there's a protest planned about it." . . .

Both United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War, the largest mainstream antiwar coalitions, with hundreds of member groups, including the National Council of Churches and the AFL-CIO, have launched campaigns that include petitions demanding an investigation into the intelligence that led to war, print and television ads that accuse Bush of misleading the nation with discredited or unproven claims about Iraq's nuclear arsenal and suggestions for organizing at the local level to reinvigorate the broad movement that developed in the weeks before the war. . . .

Win Without War and MoveOn.org are already calling a 30-second ad they co-sponsored, which aired over the past week in the Washington and New York area cable markets, an unqualified hit. The ad, which labels Bush a "misleader," brought in thousands of people to the MoveOn.org Web site to sign the petition. The coalition said it will place ads in at least 10 other cities over the next two weeks.

"Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover" -- Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce in Newsday, 7/22/03 (archived at commondreams.org):

WASHINGTON - The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.

It was Wilson who started the controversy that has engulfed the Bush administration by writing in the New York Times two weeks ago that he had traveled to Niger last year at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Though he told the CIA and the State Department there was no basis to the report, the allegation was used anyway by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech in January.

Wilson and a retired CIA official said yesterday that the "senior administration officials" who named Plame had, if their description of her employment was accurate, violated the law and may have endangered her career and possibly the lives of her contacts in foreign countries. Plame could not be reached for comment.

"When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that's mean, that's petty, it's irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned," said Frank Anderson, former CIA Near East Division chief.

A current intelligence official said that blowing the cover of an undercover officer could affect the officer's future assignments and put them and everyone they dealt with overseas in the past at risk.

"If what the two senior administration officials said is true," Wilson said, "they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships and operations." What's more, it would mean that "this White House has taken an asset out of the" weapons of mass destruction fight, "not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile."

Deputy White House Press Secretary Claire Buchan referred questions to a National Security Council spokesman who did not return phone calls last night.

"This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation," Wilson said, "but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward" to reveal similar intelligence lapses.

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." . . .

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."

"We paid his [Wilson's] air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.

Harpers Weekly Review, 7/22/03

"Dead: The Sons of Hussein" -- Julian Borger and Gary Younge in The Guardian, 7/23/03:

Uday and Qusay, Saddam Hussein's sons and his most feared lieutenants, were killed yesterday in a gun battle at their hideout in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

The deaths of Saddam's two fugitive "princes" represent the biggest coup for coalition forces since the fall of Baghdad more than three months ago. It offers Washington and London hope of a turning point in a bloody guerrilla war. . . .

Saddam's sons, together with another man and a young boy, had barricaded themselves inside the home of a Mosul businessman, thought to be a distant relative, and put up fierce resistance. Gen Sanchez said the entire operation took six hours.

"They died in a fierce gun battle. They resisted the detention and the efforts of the coalition forces to apprehend them. They were killed in the ensuing gunfight," he said.

The US army promised conclusive proof of the deaths today, possibly by presenting photographs.

General Sanchez said the raid on the house followed a tip-off from a local informant. "We had a walk-in last night that came in and gave us the information [about where they were hiding]," he said.

Gen Sanchez added that it was likely that the $15m (�9.4m) reward on each of their heads - for information leading to their discovery - would be claimed. "We are pursuing that at this point in time. That will probably happen," he said.

The deaths of Saddam's sons will come as an immense relief to the US and British governments, which have been under sustained attack for justifying the invasion with questionable intelligence.

The elimination of Uday and Qusay will provide a temporary distraction from the intelligence scandal. Iraq analysts said their deaths could sap the morale of guerrilla groups fighting for the restoration of the Hussein dynasty.

"Bush Aides Disclose Warnings from CIA" -- Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 7/23/03:

The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, White House officials said yesterday.

The officials made the disclosure hours after they were alerted by the CIA to the existence of a memo sent to Bush's deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on Oct. 6. The White House said Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, on Friday night discovered another memo from the CIA, dated Oct. 5, also expressing doubts about the Africa claims.

The information, provided in a briefing by Hadley and Bush communications director Dan Bartlett, significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. The acknowledgment of the memos, which were sent on the eve of a major presidential speech in Cincinnati about Iraq, comes four days after the White House said the CIA objected only to technical specifics of the Africa charge, not its general accuracy.

In fact, the officials acknowledged yesterday, the CIA warned the White House early on that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence, was not particularly significant and assumed Iraq was pursuing an acquisition that was arguably not possible and of questionable value because Iraq had its own supplies.

Yesterday's disclosures indicate top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to the nation. The claim was a major part of the case made by the Bush administration before the Iraq war that Hussein represented a serious threat because of his nuclear ambitions; other pieces of evidence have also been challenged.

Hadley, who also received a phone call from CIA Director George J. Tenet before the president's Oct. 7 speech asking that the Africa allegation be removed, took the blame for allowing the charge to be revived in the State of the Union address. "I should have recalled . . . that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue," he said. He said Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice were counting on his dependability, and "it is now clear to me that I failed." Hadley said Rice was not made aware of the doubts but "feels personal responsibility as well."

"The high standards that the president set with his speeches were not met," Hadley said, acknowledging that the problem was not solely that the CIA failed to strike the reference from the January speech. "We had opportunities here to avoid this problem. We didn't take them," he said. . . .

The new information amounted to an on-the-record mea culpa for a White House that had pointed fingers at the CIA for vetting the speech, prompting an earlier acceptance of responsibility by Tenet. But that abruptly changed yesterday after the CIA furnished evidence that it had fought the inclusion of the charge.

The disclosures punctured claims made by Rice and others in the past two weeks. Rice and other officials had asserted that nobody in the White House knew of CIA objections, and that the CIA supported the Africa accusation generally, making only technical objections about location and quantity. On Friday, a White House official mischaracterized the CIA's objections, saying repeatedly that Tenet opposed the inclusion in Bush's Oct. 7 speech "because it was single source, not because it was flawed." . . .

The new information disclosed by the White House provides additional material for Democrats who have been criticizing Bush's handling of Iraq intelligence. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a former intelligence committee chairman and now a presidential candidate, said the admission "raises sharp new questions as to who at the White House engaged in a coverup." Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who has been pressing the administration on the matter for months, said, "Congress needs to investigate this with immediate public hearings."

But strategists in both political parties said the lifespan of the criticism, and the possibility of congressional hearings in the fall, largely depends on whether the occupation of Iraq continues to be as violent and chaotic as it has been. Yesterday's disclosures by the White House came at a time of otherwise good news related to Iraq, as the U.S. military confirmed that it had killed Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, and Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a rescued prisoner of war, returned to her home town in West Virginia after four months of hospitalization.

"White House Tries to Limit Iraq Damage" -- Tom Raum (AP) in The Washington Post, 7/23/03:

The Bush administration is reaching out to its Republican allies in Congress in an effort to counter criticism of President Bush's Iraq policy and his use of discredited intelligence to advance the case for toppling Saddam Hussein. . . .

On Monday, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett went to Capitol Hill to urge Republicans to emphasize positive aspects of the broader war against terrorism, administration and congressional officials said.

Bartlett met with top GOP House and Senate aides to essentially provide "talking points" for countering Democratic attacks and to share recently declassified intelligence information with them, officials said.

The administration wants its GOP allies in Congress to do more to emphasize some of the upside to deposing Saddam, including humanitarian gestures and the freeing of the Iraqi people.

Other aggressive efforts are expected by the administration in the days ahead to try to regain control of the message, including a possible speech on the issue by Vice President Dick Cheney, administration and congressional GOP aides said. . . .

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday that Bartlett's trip to Capitol Hill was an attempt to touch base with congressional allies on the subject and go over what the administration views as "misinformation."

"Who's Unpatriotic Now?" -- Paul Krugman in The New York Times, 7/22/03:

Issues of principle aside, the invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose an imminent threat has seriously weakened our military position. Of the Army's 33 combat brigades, 16 are in Iraq; this leaves us ill prepared to cope with genuine threats. Moreover, military experts say that with almost two-thirds of its brigades deployed overseas, mainly in Iraq, the Army's readiness is eroding: normal doctrine calls for only one brigade in three to be deployed abroad, while the other two retrain and refit.

And the war will have devastating effects on future recruiting by the reserves. A widely circulated photo from Iraq shows a sign in the windshield of a military truck that reads, "One weekend a month, my ass."

To top it all off, our insistence on launching a war without U.N. approval has deprived us of useful allies. George Bush claims to have a "huge coalition," but only 7 percent of the coalition soldiers in Iraq are non-American ? and administration pleas for more help are sounding increasingly plaintive.

How serious is the strain on our military? The Brookings Institution military analyst Michael O'Hanlon, who describes our volunteer military as "one of the best military institutions in human history," warns that "the Bush administration will risk destroying that accomplishment if they keep on the current path."

But instead of explaining what happened to the Al Qaeda link and the nuclear program, in the last few days a series of hawkish pundits have accused those who ask such questions of aiding the enemy. Here's Frank Gaffney Jr. in The National Post: "Somewhere, probably in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is gloating. He can only be gratified by the feeding frenzy of recriminations, second-guessing and political power plays. . . . Signs of declining popular appreciation of the legitimacy and necessity of the efforts of America's armed forces will erode their morale. Similarly, the enemy will be encouraged."

Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden -- who really did attack America -- and Kim Jong Il -- who really is building nukes.

"9/11 Report: No Iraq Link to al-Qaeda" -- Shaun Waterman at UPI.com:

The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned.

"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official who has seen the report.

Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official's statement.

Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Cleland replied: "I do ... There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden's terrorist followers."

The revelation is likely to embarrass the Bush administration, which made links between Saddam's support for bin Laden -- and the attendant possibility that Iraq might supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction -- a major plank of its case for war.

"The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said Cleland. "What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends."

The inquiry, by members of both the House and Senate intelligence committees, was launched in February last year amid growing concerns that failures by U.S. intelligence had allowed the 19 al-Qaida terrorists to enter the United States, hijack four airliners, and kill almost 3,000 people.

Although the committee completed its work at the end of last year, publication of the report has been delayed by interminable wrangles between the committees and the administration over which parts of it could be declassified.

Cleland accused the administration of deliberately delaying the report's release to avoid having its case for war undercut.

"The reason this report was delayed for so long -- deliberately opposed at first, then slow-walked after it was created -- is that the administration wanted to get the war in Iraq in and over ... before (it) came out," he said.

"Had this report come out in January like it should have done, we would have known these things before the war in Iraq, which would not have suited the administration."

The case that administration officials made that al-Qaida was linked to Iraq was based on four planks.

Firstly, the man suspected of being the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, was supposed to have met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, in April 2001. But Czech intelligence - the original source of the report - later recanted, and U.S. intelligence officials now believe that Atta was in the United States at the time of the supposed meeting.

The Iraqi official, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani is now in U.S. custody.

Secondly, U.S. officials said Iraq was harboring an alleged al-Qaida terrorist named Abu Mussab al-Zakawi.

But the government official who has seen the report poured scorn on the evidence behind this claim.

"Because someone makes a telephone call from a country, does not mean that the government of that country is complicit in that," he told UPI.

"When we found out there was an al-Qaida cell operating in Germany, we didn't say 'we have to invade Germany, because the German government supports al-Qaida.' ... There was no evidence to indicate that the Iraqi government knew about or was complicit in Zakawi's activities."

Newsweek magazine has also reported that German intelligence agencies - having interrogated one of Zakawi's associates - believed that Zakawi was not even an al-Qaida member, but headed a rival Islamic terror group.

Thirdly, defectors provided to U.S. intelligence by the then-exiled opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, said that Islamic terrorists had been training to hijack airliners using a disused plane fuselage at a camp in Salman Pak in Iraq.

"My understanding was that there was an alternate explanation for that," said the government official, suggesting that that they were doing counter terrorism training there. "I'm not saying that was the explanation, but there were other ways of looking at it."

Fourthly, officials have cited a series of meetings in the 1980's and 1990's between Iraqi officials and al-Qaida members, especially in Sudan.

Former CIA counter-terrorism analyst Judith Yaphe has questioned the significance of this data, "Every terrorist group and state sponsor was represented in Sudan (at that time)," she said recently, "How could they not meet in Khartoum, a small city offering many opportunities for terrorist t�te-�-t�tes."

The government official added that the significance of such meetings was unclear: "Intelligence officials, including ours, meet with bad guys all around the world every day. That's their job. Maybe to get information from them, maybe to try and recruit them.

"There are a series of alternative explanations for why two people like that might meet, and that's what we don't know."

He went on to suggest that the conclusions drawn from the information about the Sudan meetings was indicative of a wider-ranging problem with the administration's attitude to intelligence on the alleged Iraq al-Qaida link.

"They take a fact that you could draw several different conclusions from, and in every case they draw the conclusion that supports the policy, without any particular evidence that would meet the normal bar that analytic tradecraft would require for you to make that conclusion," he concluded.

"Sword-Passing" -- Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, 7/24/03:

Earlier this month CIA Director George Tenet accepted responsibility for the assertion in George Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to secure uranium in Africa. It was said at the time that Tenet had fallen on his sword. It is now clear that he fell on his credibility instead.

In a game of White House sword-passing not seen since the Nixon administration, it now turns out that yet another administration official -- Stephen Hadley of the National Security Council -- has stepped forward to take a piece of the blame himself. He follows Tenet and various White House and CIA underlings -- so many confessions, so many swords, so many people responsible yet none of them accountable.

Hadley now says he was twice warned by the CIA not to include the accusation about African uranium in a speech Bush was set to deliver last Oct. 7 in Cincinnati. One memo was sent on Oct. 5 and another on Oct 6. As a result, the mention of African uranium was deleted from Bush's speech. Later, of course, it resurfaced in the State of the Union.

Why? Bush's own response, provided to the media while he was visiting Africa, was that the CIA cleared the speech. Condoleezza Rice said the same thing while winging her way to Uganda: "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety." In a flash, Tenet took the hint. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency."

But Tenet had never read Bush's speech. Why? It's impossible to say for sure, but maybe -- just maybe -- he had given up fighting with a White House determined to exaggerate the urgency of dealing with Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Whatever the case, he had twice warned the White House -- and his deputies had issued similar warnings. What more could a CIA director do?

Well, he might have resigned. He might have spoken up. He might have done what in Washington is considered virtually noble Roman behavior and leaked the truth. Instead, he did as the Bush White House wished. He took the blame.

It would be one thing if Tenet had proved himself to be a whiz-bang CIA director. He has not. He was the nation's premier intelligence official on Sept. 11, which can only be called a massive intelligence failure. The United States was attacked on his watch -- not because the terrorists were so awfully clever but because our intelligence agencies were so awfully inept.

The same could be said for Rice. She had been warned by the Clinton administration's outgoing NSC head, Sandy Berger, that terrorism -- specifically Osama bin Laden -- would be her number-one priority. Upon taking office, she relegated it to something less than that -- with disastrous consequences. It was her job to keep the FBI and the CIA coordinated. She failed at that, too.

Hadley is Rice's top aide. He says he forgot about the warnings from Tenet -- two memos and one phone call -- and did not tell her. If that's the case, he's in the wrong job. If it's not the case -- and a reasonable man could have reasonable doubt -- is it possible Rice said nothing to Bush? Maybe not. But if not, why not? That's her job.

By now it is clear that the White House was so desperate to buttress its unsupportable claims of an imminent Iraqi nuclear threat that it was willing to include the most questionable of evidence. That happened not only with the uranium reference but also with another piece of supposedly significant evidence -- those aluminum tubes that turned out to play no role in any nuclear weapons program. Who was behind this? Rice? Dick Cheney? The president himself? The uranium reference kept turning up like a bad penny. It had a sponsor -- someone awfully high up.

"Why Commander in Chief Is Losing the War of the 16 Words" -- Dan Balz and Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 7/24/03:

If President Bush's White House is known for anything, it is competence at delivering a disciplined message and deftness in dealing with bad news. That reputation has been badly damaged by the administration's clumsy efforts to explain how a statement based on disputed intelligence ended up in the president's State of the Union address.

How did the White House stumble so badly? There are a host of explanations, from White House officials, their allies outside the government and their opponents in the broader debate about whether the administration sought to manipulate evidence while building its case to go to war against Iraq.

But the dominant forces appear to have been the determination by White House officials to protect the president for using 16 questionable words about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium in Africa and a fierce effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to protect its reputation through bureaucratic infighting that has forced the president's advisers to repeatedly alter their initial version of events.

At several turns, when Bush might have taken responsibility for the language in his Jan. 28 address to the country, he and his top advisers resisted, claiming others -- particularly those in the intelligence community -- were responsible.

Asked again yesterday whether Bush should ultimately be held accountable for what he says, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters, "Let's talk about what's most important. That's the war on terrorism, winning the war on terrorism. And the best way you do that is to go after the threats where they gather, not to let them come to our shore before it's too late."

White House finger-pointing in turn prompted the CIA's allies to fire back by offering evidence that ran counter to official White House explanations of events and by helping to reveal a chronology of events that forced the White House to change its story.

The latest turn came Tuesday, when deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and White House communications director Dan Bartlett revealed the existence of two previously unknown memos showing that Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet had repeatedly urged the administration last October to remove a similar claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.

White House officials and their Republican allies in Congress hope the Hadley-Bartlett briefing will help the administration turn a corner on the controversy, and they plan a counteroffensive to try to put Bush's critics on the defensive. But the administration faces new risks as Congress begins its own investigations, which could bring the bureaucratic infighting into open conflict.

The White House and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are trying to work out ground rules for the collection of information from National Security Council personnel involved in preparing the president's State of the Union address, according to administration and congressional sources.

"A list has gone to the White House and documents have been requested," according to one congressional aide. On that document list are the two memos cited by Hadley and Bartlett from the CIA, dated Oct. 5 and Oct. 6, which contained comments on specific sections of drafts of the president's Oct. 7 speech on the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

Tenet testified yesterday in closed session of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and today the CIA inspector general, John L. Helgerson, is scheduled to appear before the Senate intelligence panel to discuss the findings of his ongoing investigation of how the speech was vetted. Tenet was questioned about the State of the Union speech and about the intelligence developed around Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Beyond the memos, one area of potential risk for the administration is an October telephone call from Tenet to Hadley to make certain the offending language had been removed from Bush's Oct. 7 speech. Hadley said he cannot recall whether that issue was discussed with Tenet on Oct. 5, Oct. 6 or Oct. 7, but a senior administration official familiar with the events said it was "most likely" on Oct. 7, the day of Bush's speech. Going to Hadley directly indicated Tenet's fear that his underlings had not been successful.

Another potential problem for the White House is the sharp disagreement between testimony given the committee last Thursday by CIA senior analyst Alan Foley about his conversation with Robert Joseph, a National Security Council staff member, about what was to go into the State of the Union address and how Bartlett described it to reporters Tuesday.

For all the purported discipline and unity within the Bush administration, disputes among members of the national security team have been common, particularly in the run-up to the war with Iraq. Those disputes, however, generally pitted the State and Defense departments against one another, but once Bush made a decision, the combatants generally accepted that and moved on.

What is unusual about this episode is that the combatants are officials at the White House and the CIA -- and that the White House has tried without success to resolve the controversy. The biggest lesson learned so far, said one administration official, is that "you don't pick a bureaucratic fight with the CIA." To which a White House official replied, "That wasn't our intention, but that certainly has been the perception."

Report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2002 (gpoaccess.gov)

"Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover" -- Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce in Newsday, 7/22/03:

Washington - The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.

It was Wilson who started the controversy that has engulfed the Bush administration by writing in the New York Times two weeks ago that he had traveled to Niger last year at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Though he told the CIA and the State Department there was no basis to the report, the allegation was used anyway by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech in January.

Wilson and a retired CIA official said yesterday that the "senior administration officials" who named Plame had, if their description of her employment was accurate, violated the law and may have endangered her career and possibly the lives of her contacts in foreign countries. Plame could not be reached for comment. . . .

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Wilson and others said such a disclosure would be a violation of the law by the officials, not the columnist.

Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.

"Iraq Flap Shakes Rice's Image" -- Dana Milbank and Mike Allen in The Washington Post, 7/27/03:

Just weeks ago, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, made a trip to the Middle East that was widely seen as advancing the peace process. There was speculation that she would be a likely choice for secretary of state, and hopes among Republicans that she could become governor of California and even, someday, president.

But she has since become enmeshed in the controversy over the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's weapons in the run-up to war. She has been made to appear out of the loop by colleagues' claims that she did not read or recall vital pieces of intelligence. And she has made statements about U.S. intelligence on Iraq that have been contradicted by facts that later emerged.

The remarks by Rice and her associates raise two uncomfortable possibilities for the national security adviser. Either she missed or overlooked numerous warnings from intelligence agencies seeking to put caveats on claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, or she made public claims that she knew to be false.

Most prominent is her claim that the White House had not heard about CIA doubts about an allegation that Iraq sought uranium in Africa before the charge landed in Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28; in fact, her National Security Council staff received two memos doubting the claim and a phone call from CIA Director George J. Tenet months before the speech. Various other of Rice's public characterizations of intelligence documents and agencies' positions have been similarly cast into doubt.

"If Condi didn't know the exact state of intel on Saddam's nuclear programs . . . she wasn't doing her job," said Brookings Institution foreign policy specialist Michael E. O'Hanlon. "This was foreign policy priority number one for the administration last summer, so the claim that someone else should have done her homework for her is unconvincing." . . .

In the White House briefing room on July 18, a senior administration official, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said Rice did not read October's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the definitive prewar assessment of Iraq's weapons programs by U.S. intelligence agencies. "We have experts who work for the national security adviser who would know this information," the official said when asked if Rice had read the NIE. Referring to an annex raising doubts about Iraq's nuclear program, the official said Bush and Rice "did not read footnotes in a 90-page document. . . . The national security adviser has people that do that." The annex was boxed and in regular type.

Four days later, Rice's deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, said in a second White House briefing that he did not mention doubts raised by the CIA about an African uranium claim Bush planned to make in an October speech (the accusation, cut from that speech, reemerged in Bush's State of the Union address). Hadley said he did not mention the objections to Rice because "there was no need." Hadley said he does not recall ever discussing the matter with Rice, suggesting she was not aware that the sentence had been removed.

Hadley said he could not recall discussing the CIA's concerns about the uranium claim, which was based largely on British intelligence. He said a second memo from the CIA protesting the claim was sent to Rice, but "I can't tell you she read it. I can't tell you she received it." Rice herself used the allegation in a January op-ed article.

One person who has worked with Rice describes as "inconceivable" the claims that she was not more actively involved. Indeed, subsequent to the July 18 briefing, another senior administration official said Rice had been briefed immediately on the NIE -- including the doubts about Iraq's nuclear program -- and had "skimmed" the document. The official said that within a couple of weeks, Rice "read it all." . . .

When the controversy intensified earlier this month with a White House admission of error, Rice was the first administration official to place responsibility on CIA Director Tenet for the inclusion in Bush's State of the Union address of the Africa uranium charge. The White House now concedes that pinning responsibility on Tenet was a costly mistake. CIA officials have since made clear to the White House and to Congress that intelligence agencies had repeatedly tried to wave the White House off the allegation.

The main issue is whether Rice knew that U.S. intelligence agencies had significant doubts about a claim made by British intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. "The intelligence community did not know at that time or at levels that got to us that this, that there was serious questions about this report," she said on ABC's "This Week" on June 8. A month later, on CBS's "Face the Nation," she stood by the claim. "What I knew at the time is that no one had told us that there were concerns about the British reporting. Apparently, there were. They were apparently communicated to the British."

As it turns out, the CIA did warn the British, but it also raised objections in the two memos sent to the White House and a phone call to Hadley. Hadley last Monday blamed himself for failing to remember these warnings and allowing the claim to be revived in the State of the Union address in January. Hadley said Rice, who was traveling, "wants it clearly understood that she feels a personal responsibility for not recognizing the potential problem presented by those 16 words."

In a broader matter, Rice claimed publicly that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, did not take issue with other intelligence agencies' view that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. "[W]hat INR did not take a footnote to is the consensus view that the Iraqis were actively trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program, reconstituting and so forth," she said on July 11, referring to the National Intelligence Estimate. Speaking broadly about the nuclear allegations in the NIE, she said: "Now, if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or to me."

In fact, the INR objected strongly. In a section referred to in the first paragraph of the NIE's key judgments, the INR said there was not "a compelling case" and said the government was "lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program." . . .

In Rice's July 11 briefing, on Air Force One between South Africa and Uganda, she said the CIA and the White House had "some discussion" on the Africa uranium sentence in Bush's State of the Union address. "Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," she said. Asked about how the language was changed, she replied: "I'm going to be very clear, all right? The president's speech -- that sentence was changed, right? And with the change in that sentence, the speech was cleared. Now, again, if the agency had wanted that sentence out, it would have gone. And the agency did not say that they wanted that speech out -- that sentence out of the speech. They cleared the speech. Now, the State of the Union is a big speech, a lot of things happen. I'm really not blaming anybody for what happened."

Three days later, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Rice told him she was not referring to the State of the Union address, as she had indicated, but to Bush's October speech. That explanation, however, had a flaw: The sentence was removed from the October speech, not cleared.

In addition, testimony by a CIA official before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence two days after Fleischer's clarification was consistent with the first account Rice had given. The CIA official, Alan Foley, said he told a member of Rice's staff, Robert Joseph, that the CIA objected to mentioning a specific African country -- Niger -- and a specific amount of uranium in Bush's State of the Union address. Foley testified that he told Joseph of the CIA's problems with the British report and that Joseph proposed changing the claim to refer generally to uranium in Africa.

White House communications director Dan Bartlett last Monday called that a "conspiracy theory" and said Joseph did not recall being told of any concerns.

"Washington Whispers: Insiders Suggest Condoleezza Rice Could Leave" -- Paul Bedard at USNews.com, 7/27/03:

As White House officials try to control the latest fallout over President Bush's flawed suggestion in the State of the Union address that Iraq was buying nuclear bomb materials, there's growing talk by insiders that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice may take the blame and resign. For most insiders, it's inconceivable that Rice, touted as a future secretary of state, California governor, and even vice president, would go, but the latest revelations that her shop and deputy Stephen Hadley mishandled CIA warnings have put the NSC in the bull's eye of controversy.

While it's unclear how serious the talk is inside the administration about the future of Rice or Hadley with the NSC, a few top aides are already suggesting replacements for Rice. They include former Bush administration National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, NASA chief and former Navy Secretary Sean O'Keefe, and Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq.

"A Tax Strategy for the Democrats" -- David Broder in The Washington Post, 7/27/03:

[I]t seems at least counterintuitive -- and maybe highly improbable -- for Democratic pollster-political consultant Stan Greenberg to argue that taxes can be a good issue for his party.

In a memo he sent out earlier this month, Greenberg, a sometime adviser to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, argued, on the basis of a June poll of 1,000 likely voters, that the Bush tax cuts and the Republican approach to taxes command only "lukewarm support." Further, he said, "The voters are angry about taxes, not because they think their taxes are too high, but because the wealthy and corporations do not pay their fair share."

Rather than making the past three years of tax cuts permanent, as Bush proposes, voters prefer shutting "the loopholes and tax shelters used by the wealthy and corporations" and requiring high-income people to pay Social Security taxes on all of their earnings, Greenberg said.

The implication of this analysis is that a Democrat proposing major reforms of the tax system could trump Bush's record of tax-cutting and his promise of more such reductions to come.

I was skeptical of these conclusions, but examining the poll whittled away some of my doubts. . . .

One clue came with a query about "what bothers you the most about taxes." Forty-six percent said it was "the feeling that the wealthy and corporations don't pay their fair share," compared with 31 percent who said it was the complexity of the tax system and only 14 percent who said, it was "the large amount you pay in taxes" that bothers them most.

When a variety of possible tax changes were outlined, the only ones a majority said they strongly favored were closing the tax loophole that allows corporations to set up offshore tax havens in places such as Bermuda and collecting Social Security taxes on a person's entire earnings, instead of capping them at $87,000 as is done now. Canceling recent tax cuts for the top 1 percent of earners enjoyed as much support as making all the tax cuts permanent. And moving to a flat tax -- the dream of conservatives such as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist -- finished near last.

"Privatization and Neo-Feudalism" -- Bill Willers in The San Francisco Bay View, 7/23/03:

As the deficit balloons, the rightist program to privatize public lands is also moving right along. Free marketeer Terry Anderson, whose published plan to give each citizen "shares" of the public domain, said shares being sellable on the open market to those with the wealth to scoop them up, has been made President Bush's adviser on public lands issues.

Late last year, fellow free marketeer and Interior secretary, Gale Norton, a product of the anti-environmental "Wise Use Movement," revealed plans to "outsource" to the private sector 3,500 jobs in the U.S. Park Service. This raised no eyebrows, and by January 2003 the estimate had risen to more than 11,000 positions -- an eyebrow-raising 72 percent. Soon thereafter, President Bush revealed that as many as 850,000 positions, now federal, could become privatized. It was a declaration of war on public ownership and government by the people, framed as an argument for fiscal efficiency.

"Deployment Comments under Investigation" -- Lisa Burgess in Stars and Stripes, European edition, 7/25/03:

On Monday, the 3rd ID commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, decided to stop
allowing reporters to spend time with his troops, other than to gather
information for pre-approved "news features," according to an e-mail response
from Lt. Col. Birmingham, 3rd ID spokesman in Baghdad.

The 3rd ID is "no longer embedding media for short stays, effective the
beginning of this week," Birmingham said.

The only exceptions to the policy will be made for three journalists who were
embedded with the unit during the war and have subsequently returned, Birmingham
said.

Blount "instituted the new ground rules with the intent to give soldiers some
opportunity to unwind among themselves," Birmingham said.

Harpers Weekly Review, 7/29/03

"Poindexter's Follies" -- New York Times editorial, 7/30/03:

The time has obviously come to send John Poindexter packing and to shut down the wacky espionage operation he runs at the Pentagon. The latest idea hatched by Mr. Poindexter's shop -- an online futures trading market where speculators could bet on the probabilities of terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups -- was canceled yesterday by embarrassed Pentagon officials. The next logical step is to fire Mr. Poindexter.

In testimony before Congress yesterday, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, disowned the futures project. The insensitivity of the idea boggles the mind. Quite apart from the tone-deafness of equating terrorist attacks with, say, corn futures, the plan would allow speculators -- even terrorists -- to profit from anonymous bets on future attacks. The project's theoretical underpinnings are equally absurd. Markets do not always operate perfectly in the larger world of stocks and bonds. The idea that they can reliably forecast the behavior of isolated terrorists is ridiculous.

The "Policy Analysis Market" would actually have opened for business on Oct. 1 had Senators Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan not blown the whistle. Despite Mr. Wolfowitz's pledge to kill it, however, the problem of Mr. Poindexter remains. He is a man of dubious background and dubious ideas. A retired rear admiral, he served as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to the rebels in Nicaragua. He was sentenced to six months in jail for lying to Congress, a conviction overturned on appeal. He resurfaced under the Bush administration at the Pentagon. His first big brainstorm post-9/11 was a program known as Total Information Awareness, designed to identify potential terrorists by compiling a detailed electronic dossier on millions of Americans.

Congress agreed earlier this year to subject that program to strict oversight and prohibit it from being used against Americans. In light of the revelations about the latest Poindexter scheme, Congress obviously did not go far enough. It should close his operation for good. The Senate recently agreed to do just that, adding an amendment to a Defense Department appropriations bill that would terminate funds for the program. The House must now follow suit.

"Defying Labels Left or Right, Dean's '04 Run Makes Gains" -- Jodi Wilgoren, with David Rosenbaum, in The New York Times, 7/30/03:

[Howard Dean] first dipped his toes in political water in a 1978 campaign to build a bike trail around Lake Champlain. He spent four years in the Vermont Legislature and five as lieutenant governor, both part-time jobs, before being elevated to the top job in in 1991, when Gov. Richard Snelling, a Republican, died of a heart attack.

He inherited a state budget deficit of about 11 percent, the highest income taxes in the country and the lowest bond rating in New England.

To the dismay of liberals in the Legislature who wanted to expand social and environmental programs, Dr. Dean and his chief economic adviser, Harlan Sylvester, a conservative stockbroker and investment banker, stuck with the Snelling budget-cutting plan. Helped by a booming economy, the state's finances improved sharply. Dr. Dean lowered income tax rates by 30 percent and put away millions in a rainy day fund. Vermont's bond rating became the highest in the Northeast.

In his last term, Dr. Dean won a change in law so that Vermont taxes were not automatically lowered by Mr. Bush's cut in federal income taxes, and Vermont had a comfortable surplus this spring when most other states faced crippling budget shortfalls. . . .

When he entered office, Dr. Dean was determined to provide health insurance to everyone in the state in one fell swoop. Despite support from liberal lawmakers, his plan failed, along with a similar initiative by the Clinton administration.

So Dr. Dean changed tactics and managed to accomplish much of his goal incrementally. Vermont now offers the nation's most generous health benefits to children, low-income adults and elderly residents of modest means. Almost all children in the state have full medical insurance, and more than a third of Vermont residents on Medicare get state help in paying for prescription drugs.

Under the program, teenage girls can often get counseling about sex and contraception without their parents' knowledge.

Dr. Dean promised that as president he would spend half of the money he would save by repealing Mr. Bush's recent tax cuts to provide free insurance to people under 25 and those who earn less than 185 percent of the poverty rate, and to let everybody else buy into a national plan for 7.5 percent of their gross income.

"My plan is not reform -- if you want to totally change the health-care system, I'm not your guy," Dr. Dean told supporters in Lebanon, N.H. "I'm not interested in having a big argument about what the best system is. I'm interested in getting everybody covered."

Dr. Dean earned the National Rifle Association's highest rating in its ranking of governors by signing two bills that protected gun ranges from commercial development and shifted responsibility for background checks to the federal government from county sheriffs. He says he would enforce federal laws banning assault weapons and requiring background checks, but would leave the rest to the states.

But the two most controversial bills Dr. Dean signed were forced on him by State Supreme Court decisions declaring the state's school financing system unconstitutional and demanding the same legal benefits for gay couples as for married heterosexuals.

In both instances, Dr. Dean mostly stayed in the background and left the heavy lifting to the Legislature. He insisted only that income taxes not be raised; the Legislature then turned to property taxes in wealthier communities to subsidize schools in poorer areas. And he pressed the state not to sanction gay marriages, although he allowed civil unions.

Although Dr. Dean flirted briefly with the idea of running for president in 2000, he says it was the civil union battle that finally convinced him to do so. "I realized you could win by standing up for what you believe in," he said.

"Read between the Lines of Those 28 Missing Pages" -- Robert Scheer in The Los Angeles Times, 7/29/03:

In the last week we've moved from the 16 deceitful words in George W. Bush's State of the Union speech to the 28 White House-censored pages in the congressional report that dealt with Saudi Arabia's role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the United States.

Yet even in its sanitized version, the bipartisan report, long delayed by an embarrassed White House, makes clear that the U.S. should have focused on Saudi Arabia, and not Iraq, in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

As we know, but our government tends to ignore, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia; none came from Iraq. Leaks from the censored portions of the report indicate that at least some of those Saudi terrorists were in close contact with -- and financed by -- members of the Saudi elite, extending into the ranks of the royal family.

The report finds no such connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists. It is now quite clear that the president -- unwilling to deal with the ties between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden -- pursued Hussein as a politically convenient scapegoat. By drawing attention away from the Muslim fanatic networks centered in Saudi Arabia, Bush diverted the war against terror. That seems to be the implication of the 28 pages, which the White House demanded be kept from the American people when the full report was released.

Even many in Bush's own party are irritated that the president doesn't think we can be trusted with the truth.

"I went back and read every one of those pages thoroughly," Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), former vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on "Meet the Press." "My judgment is 95% of that information could be declassified, become uncensored so the American people would know."

Asked why he thought the pages were excised, Shelby, a leading pro-administration conservative, said, "I think it might be embarrassing to international relations."

Quite an embarrassment if the censored pages reveal that the Bush administration covered up the Saudi connection to the terrorist attacks.

Obviously alluding to Saudi Arabia, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, said Sunday, "High officials in this government, who I assume were not just rogue officials acting on their own, made substantial contributions to the support and well-being of two of these terrorists and facilitated their ability to plan, practice and then execute the tragedy of Sept. 11."

On Monday, Graham, responding to reports that Saudi Arabia would welcome making public some of the pages, called on Bush to fully declassify "the currently censored pages."

Newsweek, relying on anonymous government sources, reported Monday that the "connections between high-level Saudi princes and associates of the hijackers" included helping Al Qaeda operatives enter the U.S. and financing their residence in San Diego, where they plotted their infamous attacks.

Remember too that it was well known that Saudi charities with ties to the royal House of Saud were bankrolling the Al Qaeda operation in Afghanistan -- even as George H.W. Bush visited the kingdom shortly after his son was elected, eager to secure contracts for his then-employer, the Carlyle Group.

The fact is, Riyadh, unlike Baghdad, has long been a key hotbed of extremist Muslim organizing. By shielding and nurturing our relationship with the Saudi sheiks, Bush & Son have provided cover for those who support terror.

After all, is it really likely that career-conscious FBI and CIA officers would be willing to criticize possible Al Qaeda-House of Saud links when the president's father is out hustling business ties with the same family?

Even after Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration immediately protected Saudis in the United States, including allowing members of the large Bin Laden family who were in this country to be spirited home on their government's aircraft before they could be questioned. This at a time when many immigrants from all over the world were being detained arbitrarily.

"Remembering When the Truth Mattered" --
Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial, 7/30/03:

One can never be sure when to believe ex-cons, but let's say Jeb Magruder is
telling the truth. Let's imagine the former campaign aide to President Richard
Nixon is right that Nixon personally ordered the notorious Watergate burglary of

Democratic Party headquarters in 1972. That revelation not only answers one of
the world's most-asked questions -- "What did the president know and when did he

know it?" -- but also illustrates how public sentiment about presidential
conduct has changed in the decades since. . . .

Perhaps, to today's citizenry, the development will be no big deal. Those who
recall the Watergate era remember Nixon as a deceitful man. Time has painted for

them a portrait of a craven president who considered himself above the law. That

he may have gone so far as to order a burglary may shock them no longer.

Indeed, such a blas� attitude toward presidential miscreancy fits well with
popular sentiment toward other, more recent, presidential missteps. When
President Ronald Reagan's administration was accused of violating the
congressional ban on aiding Nicaragua's contra rebels, onlookers seemed less
interested in discovering the truth than dividing into political camps. The same

occurred when Bill Clinton walked into a swamp of prevarication during the
Monica Lewinsky drama. And now that President Bush is leading America into
ill-considered wars, few of Bush's supporters appear alarmed.

Could it be that Americans have come to expect their presidents to lie, cheat,
burgle, conspire and cover up? That they're no longer surprised when the leader
of the free world turns out to be less than a model citizen? If so, they may
have people like Jeb Magruder -- folks who prize simpering loyalty and
self-interest over true patriotism -- to thank. There was a time when a
less-than-honest president sparked scorn from both sides of the political aisle
and from within the White House itself. These days? Not such a big deal.

"Body of Man Believed to Be British Arms Expert Is Found" -- Warren Hoge in The New York Times, 7/18/03:

LONDON, July 18 The body of a man believed to be the arms expert at the center of a high-profile dispute over the validity of government weapons intelligence was found today near his home in Oxfordshire.

The weapons specialist's wife told the police shortly before midnight that her husband, Dr. David Kelly, 59, had been missing since he left his home Thursday afternoon saying he was going for a walk. The body was discovered this morning on a woodland footpath five miles from the Kelly residence in the village of Southmoor. . . .

An Oxford-educated, former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq with a speciality in biological weapons, Dr. Kelly faced tough questioning on Tuesday from the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. Lawmakers especially wanted to know whether he was the source of an accusation broadcast by the BBC that the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair had doctored intelligence findings in its campaign to gain public support for going to war in Iraq.

A soft-spoken civil servant in the Ministry of Defense accustomed to working behind the scenes, Dr. Kelly was repeatedly pressed by committee members to say whether he thought he was the "fall guy" in a bitter dispute that has pitted the government against the BBC and been front-page news in Britain during the last week.

The implication of the badgering questions was that the scientist had been set up by Mr. Blair's powerful communications and security director, Alastair Campbell, and the Ministry of Defense to counter damaging reports by the BBC about possible government manipulation of intelligence. . . .

Dr. Kelly, whose title was senior adviser on weapons of mass destruction, may have unwittingly become caught up in a political firestorm for which his experience as an acknowledged authority on bioterrorism had not prepared him. . . .

Tom Mangold, a journalist for the British news network ITV and a close friend of Dr. Kelly's, said that he spoke this morning to the scientist's wife, Janice, and that she had said that her husband was "very, very angry about what had happened at the committee" on Tuesday.

"She didn't use the word `depressed,' " Mr. Mangold said, "but she said he was very, very stressed and unhappy about what had happened and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in."

The case that put Dr. Kelly in the public eye arose from a BBC report on May 29 asserting that a high-ranking Downing Street official had "sexed up" a government intelligence dossier by inserting a claim that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons that could be deployed in 45 minutes.

The BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, who covers military affairs, said the insertion had been made against the wishes of intelligence agencies. The weapons claim was the highlight of the dossier published by the government to persuade a dubious British public of the need to take immediate military action in Iraq.

Mr. Gilligan attributed his account to a senior weapons scientist with whom he had met at a downtown London hotel. The reporter did not identify the scientist or the high-ranking Downing Street official on the air, but he later wrote in a newspaper article that the official who had "sexed up" the dossier was Mr. Campbell.

Mr. Campbell reacted with fury and challenged Mr. Gilligan to produce the source of the accusation against him. Mr. Campbell collected denials from the intelligence agencies involved, demanded an apology from the BBC and gave televised testimony before the same committee that later was to hear from Dr. Kelly.

When Dr. Kelly originally volunteered to Defense Ministry managers in early July that he had met with Mr. Gilligan at a downtown hotel on May 22, Mr. Campbell seized the opportunity to challenge the BBC to say whether or not he was Mr. Gilligan's source for the report.

The BBC refused, citing its practice of not identifying people who provide information on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Campbell retorted that Dr. Kelly himself had withdrawn the request, thus eliminating the need for the BBC to continue to remain confidential.

The foreign affairs committee then invited Dr. Kelly to testify, and he appeared on Tuesday, telling its members that he did not believe that he was the "main source" for the BBC story.

As a witness, Dr. Kelly sat hunched over the desk in front of him, looking troubled and uncomfortable under the pointed questioning of members of the parliamentary panel. On several occasions, lawmakers asked him to raise his voice so they could hear his responses.

"I reckon you're the chaff thrown up to divert our probing," Andrew Mackinlay, a Labor Party member, asked Dr. Kelly as the scientist squirmed in the witness chair. "Have you ever felt like the fall guy? I mean, you've been set up, haven't you?"

Dr. Kelly said quietly that he was in no position to answer the question.

Sir John Stanley, a Conservative, said, "You were being exploited to rubbish Gilligan and his source, quite clearly."

Dr. Kelly replied, "I've just found myself in this position out of my own honesty of acknowledging that fact that I had interacted with him."

Donald Anderson, the chairman of the committee, said today that he did not believe the questioning to have been overly aggressive. "I concede, of course," he told reporters, "it was wholly outside his normal experience, therefore must have certainly been an ordeal for him."

Richard Ottaway, another committee Conservative, said: "There are games going on here, there are people trying to make points, trying to shut down avenues of inquiry, trying to open up things. But putting up Dr. Kelly was just part of the distraction, and it's had the most ghastly result, and I am deeply critical of those involved."

On Thursday, Mr. Gilligan, the BBC reporter, appeared before the committee for the second time, and afterward Mr. Anderson read a statement calling him an "unsatisfactory witness" and accusing him of changing his story from his first appearance. Mr. Gilligan denied the charge and called the committee a "hanging jury".

The Ministry of Defense said it would hold an independent judicial inquiry into the circumstances of Dr. Kelly's death, but the government showed no signs tonight of bowing to the growing demands from members of Parliament for a full-scale independent judicial look into the whole issue of weapons intelligence.

"Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace" -- Mark Fineman, Robin Wright, and Doyle McManus in The Los Angeles Times, 7/18/03:

Since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, U.S. and British troops have struggled to bring order from chaos. Water, electricity and security are in short supply, fueling resentment among many Iraqis. A guerrilla-like resistance has taken shape against the occupation; U.S. casualties mount almost daily in an operation that is costing nearly $4 billion a month and stalling the withdrawal of American forces.

The Bush administration planned well and won the war with minimal allied casualties. Now, according to interviews with dozens of administration officials, military leaders and independent analysts, missteps in the planning for the subsequent peace could threaten the lives of soldiers and drain U.S. resources indefinitely and cloud the victory itself. . . .

As Bremer now struggles to normalize Iraq amid rising violence and the destabilizing likelihood that Saddam Hussein is still alive, Rumsfeld and other administration officials have taken to pointing out the chaos that has followed similar events in other countries, including the American Revolution.

Critics say that is all the more reason to be ready for the worst.

"It's not true there wasn't adequate planning. There was a volume of planning. More than the Clinton administration did for any of its interventions," said Rand's [James] Dobbins.

"They planned on an unrealistic set of assumptions," he said. "Clearly, in retrospect, they should have anticipated that when the old regime collapsed, there would be a period of disorder, a vacuum of power.... They should have anticipated extremist elements would seek to fill this vacuum of power. All of these in one form or another have been replicated in previous such experiences, and it was reasonable to plan for them."

Looking back from the third floor of the Pentagon, [Douglas] Feith dismissed such criticism as "simplistic." Despite initial problems, he said, progress is being made, with order returning to most of the country and a new Iraqi governing council in place.

Still, he and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely ? to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.

"We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase" distinct from combat, he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum....

"This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often."

"White House Cites 'Compelling Evidence' of Iraqi Nuclear Weapons Program" -- John J. Lumpkin (Associated Press) in The Washington Post, 7/18/03:

An intelligence assessment last October cites "compelling evidence" that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute a nuclear-weapons program, according to documents released Friday by the White House.

Mounting a campaign to counter criticism that it used flawed intelligence to justify war with Iraq, the White House made public excerpts of the intelligence community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. That report helped shaped now-challenged comments by President Bush in his State of the Union address that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Africa.

The report asserts that Baghdad "if left unchecked...probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

It also cites unsubstantiated reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from three African countries: Niger, Somalia and "possibly" Congo.

The White House sought to bolster its case as U.S. officials said that documents alleging Iraq sought uranium from Africa were obtained months before Bush cited them in making his case for war. But intelligence analysts did not look at them closely enough to know they were forgeries until after Bush had made the claim, U.S. officials say.

Bush in his State of the Union address in January asserted that, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

However, while the British government has stood by the assertion, U.S. officials, including CIA Director George Tenet, have subsequently challenged the allegation -- which was based at least in part on forged documents -- and have said it should not have been included in Bush's speech.

The intelligence assessment is put together by all the agencies in the intelligence community, with the CIA overseeing the presentation of the report. . . .

The material released by the White House also included a "footnote" by the State Department that said "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are...highly dubious."

On Thursday, U.S. officials offered new information which suggested a disconnect between the CIA and the State Department over the handling of what turned out to be a crucial but faulty piece of intelligence -- the forged documents -- used to make the Bush administration's case for war.

Officials acknowledged that had U.S. intelligence analyzed the documents sooner, they could have discovered the forgeries before the information was used as fodder for Bush administration statements vilifying Iraq.

The State Department said it obtained the documents in the fall of 2002, but intelligence officials said the CIA didn't get them until the following February. The State Department said it made them available to other agencies in the government shortly after acquiring them; officials could not explain why the CIA did not get copies of them sooner.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome obtained the documents, which purported to show contacts between officials in Iraq and Niger over the transfer of uranium, from a journalist there in October 2002, officials said. They were shown to CIA personnel in Rome and sent to State Department headquarters in Washington. But the CIA's station in Rome did not forward them to CIA headquarters outside Washington, where they would have been analyzed.

"We acquired the documents in October 2002 and they were shared widely within the U.S. government, with all the appropriate agencies," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. Those agencies included the CIA, another U.S. official said.

But an intelligence official said the CIA didn't obtain the documents from the State Department until February 2003. The official suggested analyzing the documents was not a top priority at the time because the CIA had already investigated their substance.

The CIA only got the documents to respond to a request from the United Nations, the intelligence official said. U.N. officials, trying to run a weapons inspections regime in Iraq, asked for evidence behind the allegation in Bush's Jan. 28 speech that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The CIA provided them to the United Nations. U.N. officials announced in early March the documents were fakes, and the CIA concurred, the intelligence official said.

The Italian government, which also obtained a copy of the documents, had passed on their contents -- but not their source -- to the CIA several months earlier. The CIA had sent a retired diplomat to Africa to investigate but found little to substantiate the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

Still, the CIA included the claim, with a note that it was unconfirmed, in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the classified document that summarized information on Iraq's weapons programs.

The estimate also noted the U.S. government had other, "fragmentary" intelligence suggesting that Iraq sought uranium for its nuclear weapons program in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Despite the uncertainties, Bush administration officials tried repeatedly to use this information in speeches and statements. The CIA protested several times as the statements were being prepared, but the Niger claim made it into a State Department fact sheet in December, and the more general Africa claim was used in the president's State of the Union address.

"U.S. Had Uranium Papers Earlier" -- Walter Pincus and Dana Priest in The Washington Post, 7/18/03:

The State Department received copies of what would turn out to be forged documents suggesting that Iraq tried to purchase uranium oxide from Niger three months before the president's State of the Union address, administration officials said.

The documents, which officials said appeared to be of "dubious authenticity," were distributed to the CIA and other agencies within days. But the U.S. government waited four months to turn them over to United Nations weapons inspectors who had been demanding to see evidence of U.S. and British claims that Iraq's attempted purchase of uranium oxide violated U.N. resolutions and was among the reasons to go to war. State Department officials could not say yesterday why they did not turn over the documents when the inspectors asked for them in December.

The administration, facing increased criticism over the claims it made about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium, had said until now that it did not have the documents before the State of the Union speech.

Even before these documents arrived, both the State Department and the CIA had questions about the reliability of intelligence reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger and other African countries.

Beginning in October, the CIA warned the administration not to use the Niger claim in public. CIA Director George J. Tenet personally persuaded deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley to omit it from President Bush's Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

But on the eve of Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union address, Robert Joseph, an assistant to the president in charge of nonproliferation at the National Security Council (NSC), initially asked the CIA if the allegation that Iraq sought to purchase 500 pounds of uranium from Niger could be included in the presidential speech.

Alan Foley, a senior CIA official, disclosed this detail when he accompanied Tenet in a closed-door hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday.

Foley, director of the CIA's intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control center, told committee members that the controversial 16-word sentence was eventually suggested by Joseph in a telephone conversation just a day or two before the speech, according to congressional and administration sources who were present at the five-hour session.

At the hearing, Foley said he called Joseph to object to mentioning Niger and that a specific amount of uranium was being sought. Joseph agreed to eliminate those two elements but then proposed that the speech use more general language, citing British intelligence that said Iraq had recently been seeking uranium in Africa.

Foley said he told Joseph that the CIA had objected months earlier to the British including that in their published September dossier because of the weakness of the U.S. information. But Foley said the British had gone ahead based on their own information.

When Foley first began answering questions on who from the White House staff sought to put the uranium charge in the State of the Union address, he did not mention Joseph's name, referring only to "a person" at the NSC. It was only after Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and several other senators demanded the name that he identified him.

A senior administration official said yesterday the only conversation that took place was about the classification of the source of the alleged uranium transaction. The question was whether to attribute the alleged transaction to a classified U.S. intelligence estimate or to a published British dossier and, he said, it was "agreed to use the British."

However, there are six other references to information carried in the U.S. estimate, and they are attributed to "U.S. intelligence" or "intelligence sources."

Both the Senate committee and the White House have begun internal discussions over how to handle the potentially delicate task of questioning presidential aides as part of a congressional investigation. Claims of executive privilege have in the past increased public interest and complicated the process of calling on White House aides to testify.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said Wednesday night: "We will take this where it leads us. We'll let the chips fall where they may." A senior congressional aide said Roberts is prepared to seek a way to question Joseph and any other White House aides.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, said yesterday: "The intelligence committee has crossed that line . . . and we are looking at people in the executive branch, including the White House." He said that both Republicans and Democrats are concerned "about the further implication beyond Tenet." . . .

On Feb. 4, the U.N. inspectors' Iraq team was called to the U.S. mission in Vienna and verbally briefed on the contents of the documents. A day later, they received copies, according to officials familiar with the inspectors' work.

Using the Google Internet search engine, books on Niger and interviews with Iraqi and Nigerien officials, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts determined that the documents were fake.

On March 7, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei announced they were forged. It is not yet known who created the forgeries.

"Tragic Contempt for Free Press" -- Steven Barnett in The Guardian, 7/18/03:

One of the fundamental differences between genuine democracies and totalitarian regimes is a free press.

For a free press to operate effectively, governments must accept that their decisions and policies will be challenged, interrogated, investigated and analysed by people acting independently and using whatever legal means are available to them. It can be desperately uncomfortable, and sometimes even unfair. Very occasionally, as for Richard Nixon over Watergate, it can be politically fatal. But the alternative is far worse.

The case of David Kelly, the Ministry of Defence weapons expert who ministers "outed" as the source of Andrew Gilligan's story that the government exaggerated Iraq's weapons capability, raises crucial questions about the operation of a free press and the relationship between government and journalists.

There is no question that Gilligan's report for the BBC's Today programme was explosive. There is no question that it made the government's position uncomfortable - perhaps even untenable - on the reasons for going to war. And there is no question that Alastair Campbell, in particular, was apoplectic about the allegations being made. . . .

Every politician and every journalist knows the rules: it is axiomatic to the operation of a free press that no journalist will ever name their source, because the vast majority of information would dry up if there was any risk of exposure.

In issues such as defence and security, where sources are usually in breach of the Official Secrets Act, no one would talk. Governments would be free to spend money corruptly, take ill-judged decisions or implement undemocratic policies without fear of public scrutiny.

In defence and security matters, more than any other area of public reporting, the source/journalist relationship is central to this democratic process of scrutiny and interrogation. Alastair Campbell, a journalist, knows that better than anyone. So do defence secretary Geoff Hoon and prime minister Tony Blair.

Their public calls for the BBC to cofirm or deny that Dr Kelly was their source were not just a disingenuous attempt to ignore the rules; they were a deliberate, disgraceful attempt to undermine the foundations of genuine journalistic inquiry in a desperate pitch to shore up their own credibility.

In the light of what has happened, BBC journalists may be asking themselves whether they should have behaved differently. It is hard to see how. The nature of their investigation goes to the heart of how a free press should operate independently and in the public interest.

The government, however, cannot be let off the hook. It has demonstrated a profound contempt for the most basic conventions governing relationships between press and politicians. It is possible that, as a result, a man has died.

"Warning in Iraq Report Unread" -- Dana Milbank and Dana Priest in The Washington Post, 7/19/03:

President Bush and his national security adviser did not entirely read the most authoritative prewar assessment of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, including a State Department claim that an allegation Bush would later use in his State of the Union address was "highly dubious," White House officials said yesterday.

The acknowledgment came in a briefing for reporters in which the administration released excerpts from last October's National Intelligence Estimate, a classified, 90-page summary that was the definitive assessment of Iraq's weapons programs by U.S. intelligence agencies. The report declared that "most" of the six intelligence agencies believed there was "compelling evidence that Saddam [Hussein] is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program." But the document also included a pointed dissent by the State Department, which said the evidence did not "add up to a compelling case" that Iraq was making a comprehensive effort to get nuclear weapons. . . .

A senior administration official who briefed reporters yesterday said neither Bush nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice read the NIE in its entirety. "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document," said the official, referring to the "Annex" that contained the State Department's dissent. The official conducting the briefing rejected reporters' entreaties to allow his name to be used, arguing that it was his standard procedure for such sessions to be conducted anonymously.

The official said Bush was "briefed" on the NIE's contents, but "I don't think he sat down over a long weekend and read every word of it." Asked whether Bush was aware the State Department called the Africa-uranium claim "highly dubious," the official, who coordinated Bush's State of the Union address, said: "He did not know that."

"The president was comfortable at the time, based on the information that was provided in his speech," the official said of the decision to use it in the address to Congress. "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."

"United Nations in Iraq -- The Only Way to Save Face in Baghdad" -- Fred Kaplan at Slate.com, 7/18/03:

It is becoming increasingly clear that, at some point, the United Nations will have to take over the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. The only question is whether Kofi Annan ends up rushing in on his own terms to fill the gaps of a desperately overwhelmed American occupation force -- or whether President Bush comes to his senses, realizes that the task is much harder than his advisers had predicted, and admits that he can't manage it by himself. If he reaches this conclusion in six months or a year, it will look like a mortifying retreat; if he does so much sooner, like now, he might still be able to look courageous and wise. . . .

One of the year's saddest official documents is the U.S. Agency for International Development's "Vision for Post-Conflict Iraq," a 13-page internal policy memo, dated Feb. 19, 2003 (leaked a few weeks later to the Wall Street Journal), that, read in retrospect, exposes the administration's full naiveté. In addition to the fine-tuned calculations of what percentage of electricity, water, health care, and other amenities will be restored within a few days, 60 days, and six months after the war ends, the memo contains this poignant decree: "The national government will be limited to assume national functions, such as defense and security, monetary and fiscal matters, justice, foreign affairs, and strategic interests such as oil and gas," while local assemblies will handle all other matters "in an open, transparent and accountable manner."

Should we laugh or cry at this noble plan to mate Jefferson with Hamilton on the democratic breeding grounds of the New Mesopotamia? The remarkable thing about the passage is that not a single noun or adjective turns out to have any bearing on the current reality. "National government," "defense," "security," "fiscal matters," "justice," "foreign affairs" -- these concepts simply don't exist.

Another presumption going into the war was that, by this time, U.S. troop levels in Iraq would have been cut to 50,000. (The fighting would be over, and President Chalabi's militia fighters, transformed into the new Iraqi army, would have mopped up the remaining pockets of resistance.) This notion underlay the Pentagon's initial forecast that the monthly cost of occupation would now be $2 billion instead of, as it turns out, $3.9 billion.

The assumptions of America's postwar policy have crumbled, so it should be no surprise that the policy is on the verge of crumbling, too. Leaving is not a real option; it would be a hideous thing -- politically, strategically, and morally -- to wreck a nation, install an interim "governing council," then split.

But staying, at least under the current arrangement, isn't much of an option either. We can't afford its price, in money or lives. The longer the United States remains the dominant face of armed authority, the more the Iraqis will associate us with the continuing chaos, and thus the greater the chance that, once they do form their own government, anti-Americanism will be the thickest of threads that hold it together.

"Something to Hide?" -- David Ignatius in The Washington Post, 7/18/03:

As political crises mount in Washington and London over evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it would be especially useful to have the testimony of a leading expert on the subject, Saddam Hussein's science adviser, Amir Saadi.

Saadi (the seven of diamonds in the coalition's deck of cards) surrendered voluntarily to U.S. authorities in Baghdad on April 12. He was the first senior Iraqi official to do so. Because he had never been a member of the Baath Party, U.S. officials were hopeful that he would provide honest information.

TV addicts will remember Saadi as the articulate, cleanshaven English speaker who tried (never entirely convincingly, to this viewer) to explain Iraq's dealings with U.N. weapons inspectors. He was educated in Britain and Germany and married a foreigner, who was never allowed to live with him in Baghdad. Although he served as minister of petroleum and industries at various points, he was never particularly close to Hussein.

"He wanted to make himself available to the coalition forces for questioning and cooperation," said Saadi's German-born wife, Helma, in an e-mail message this week. One of Saadi's American supporters agrees: "He has everything to gain by being honest, and absolutely nothing to gain from continued deception."

So where has Saadi been for the past three months? His family believes he has been imprisoned at the Baghdad airport along with other Iraqi captives. His wife said that she has been communicating through the Red Cross and that in his last communication, on June 15, he told her he was "being treated correctly," was "allowed to shower once a week" and was passing the time reading and writing.

Saadi's friends say there has been quiet discussion about his case with the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer. Believing that Saadi is "clean," some officials of the authority have recommended three times to higher officials at the Pentagon that he be released, according to Saadi's friends. Each of these requests has been rejected, they say.

But why muzzle Saadi? At a time when there are political firestorms in America and Britain over Iraq's WMD program, why not let one of Iraq's leading scientists answer questions? For example: When (if ever) were banned weapons destroyed? If they were destroyed, why didn't Iraq make a full disclosure, as demanded by the United Nations? Was Hussein afraid that if he admitted he had destroyed his WMD stockpile, he would lose a deterrent against attack by Kurdish and Shiite enemies of his regime? These are precisely the questions Saadi could help clarify.

Saadi's silence, I suspect, is evidence that the Pentagon and the White House have concluded that any public release of his testimony would undercut their position. After all, this White House is so desperate to protect President Bush on WMD issues that it is prepared to sacrifice CIA Director George Tenet. If Saadi's testimony could help the president, surely we would have heard it by now.

I have the same question about another man who voluntarily surrendered to the coalition, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. He turned himself in April 24 after several days of negotiation involving an Iraqi American intermediary in the United States.

Aziz in his later years was not an intimate of Hussein -- that's why he was only the eight of spades in the coalition's deck. But he knows things that would be relevant to the British and American publics. Like Saadi, he has little incentive at this point to lie. His family even wants him to publish his memoirs.

I spoke with his son, Ziad Aziz, yesterday from Amman. He said his only official contact from his father was a June 14 letter via the Red Cross saying he was in good health. The younger Aziz recalled that when he said goodbye in Baghdad, his father seemed ready to cooperate fully. He, too, might be able to tell the world important information, were he free to do so.

What's bothersome about these cases is that they reinforce the impression that the Bush administration has something to hide. Why not disclose the testimony of people the coalition worked so hard to catch? The only convincing explanation, argues a former CIA official, is that their accounts would "directly refute the Bush administration's insistence that WMD still exist somewhere -- an assertion that we all know is growing more questionable every day."

The solid rationale for this war was liberating Iraq from Hussein's brutal regime, rather than the shakier WMD evidence. How bizarre that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to play a weak hand and that they now keep doubling their bets as its weakness becomes more apparent.

Cheney's Oil Maps: Can the Real Reason for War Be This Crass?" -- Mano Singham at Counterpunch.org, 7/19/03:

During the run-up to the invasion on Iraq, while speaking at teach-ins and other forums and taking part in other anti-war activities, I was somewhat skeptical of those who argued that the war was simply about getting hold of Iraqi oil for American oil companies. I cringed a little at the slogans and placards that said "No blood for oil!" , "No war for oil!", etc., and disagreed with those that the attack was due to a simple quid pro quo between the administration and its oil company cronies. While I found the administration's case for war to be unbelievable, the 'war for oil' thesis seemed to me to be a far too simplistic approach to global politics.

I fancied my self to be a much more sophisticated geo-strategic analyst. Of course, the fact that Iraq had the world's second largest reserves could not be coincidental and definitely played a role in the war plans. But I thought it more likely that broader geopolitical concerns were more dominant, such as showing the world that the US had the power to enforce its will anywhere, and to establish a long-term and secure strategic base in the middle east from which to ensure dominance of the region. To the extent that oil played a role, I thought that purpose of the war was not mainly to divert Iraqi oil revenues to US companies but instead to ensure control over the oil flow to the rest of the world so that economic rivals such as Europe and Japan, whose economies were dependent on middle east oil, would be forced to be subservient to US global interests and pressure.

The thought that the war was actually about making money for individuals and corporations in the short term did not seem to me to be credible. That was too petty and crass.

That was why I was stunned to read the press release put out by the public interest group Judicial Watch on July 17, 2003. This organization, along with the Sierra Club, had argued that both the membership of the Energy Task Force chaired by Vice-President Cheney and the proceedings of its meetings should be made public and had sought the information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) since April 19, 2001. The Vice President had vigorously opposed this opening up of its activities and so a lawsuit was filed. On March 5, 2002 the US District Judge ordered the government to produce the documents, which was finally done by the Commerce Department just recently.

The Judicial Watch press release states that these released documents "contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org."

The press release continues: "The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise feature a map of each country's oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date."

"White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim on Iraqi Strikes" -- Dana Milbank in The Washington Post, 7/20/03:

The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.

The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given."

The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public "dossier" on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and against the wishes of British intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable.

The White House embraced the claim, from a British dossier on Iraq, at the same time it began to promote the dossier's disputed claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa.

Bush administration officials last week said the CIA was not consulted about the claim. A senior White House official did not dispute that account, saying presidential remarks such as radio addresses are typically "circulated at the staff level" within the White House only.

Virtually all of the focus on whether Bush exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons ambitions has been on the credibility of a claim he made in the Jan. 28 State of the Union address about efforts to buy uranium in Africa. But an examination of other presidential remarks, which received little if any scrutiny by intelligence agencies, indicates Bush made more broad accusations on other intelligence matters related to Iraq.

For example, the same Rose Garden speech and Sept. 28 radio address that mentioned the 45-minute accusation also included blunt assertions by Bush that "there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." This claim was highly disputed among intelligence experts; a group called Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who could have been in Iraq, were both believed to have al Qaeda contacts but were not themselves part of al Qaeda.

Bush was more qualified in his major Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati, mentioning al Qaeda members who got training and medical treatment from Iraq. The State of the Union address was also more hedged about whether al Qaeda members were in Iraq, saying "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."

"Squandering Capital" -- Madeleine Albright in The Washington Post, 7/20/03:

Now would not be a bad time to start worrying. Tens of thousands of American troops will be in Iraq, perhaps for years, surrounded by Iraqis with guns. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says this is not a quagmire; I pray he is right. But the practical problems faced by the talented American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, and by U.S. soldiers trying to maintain order without a clear way of separating enemies from friends are daunting.

It would help greatly if we had more assistance from the international community, but in fairness, the war was an Anglo-American production; it's unlikely we will get substantial help without yielding significant authority, something the administration is loath to do. Meanwhile, U.S. credibility has been undermined by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and by the inclusion of dubious information in the president's State of the Union address. . . .

Overall, the outlook for preventing the spread of potentially destabilizing weapons systems is bleak. The administration, openly allergic to treaties and arms control, has made no effort to promote restraint in developing arms as a normative ethic to which all nations have an interest in adhering. Instead, it has decided to fight proliferation primarily through military means and threats. Is this adequate?

Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified recently that "new alliances" are pooling resources "to deter or offset U.S. military superiority." Globalization has made the technology and resources necessary to develop sophisticated weapons more widely available. "Some 25 countries," Jacoby warns, "possess or are actively pursuing WMD or missile programs. The threat to U.S. and allied interests will grow during the next decade." . . .

Three years ago, America had vast diplomatic capital based on the goodwill we enjoyed around the world, and vast financial capital based on our international economic leadership and a record budget surplus. Now our capital of all kinds has been dissipated and we are left with more intractable dilemmas than resources or friends.

As someone who has served in positions of responsibility, I know it is much harder to devise practical solutions from the inside than to offer theoretical solutions from the outside. The nature of today's world, not the Bush administration, is responsible for the majority of problems we face. I would be less concerned, however, if I thought the administration was learning as it went along -- learning how to attract broader international support for its policies, make better use of neglected diplomatic tools, share responsibility, be more careful with the truth, finish what it starts and devise economic policies consonant with America's global role.

The quickest way to a more effective national security policy is to acknowledge the need for improvement; until that happens, we will continue to slide backward toward ever more dangerous ground.

"Patriotism or Party? GOP Has to Choose" -- Capital Times editorial, 7/20/03:

If Bush and his aides used information they knew to have been discredited in an attempt to win support for a war that has killed Americans and Iraqis, that has cost tens of billions of dollars and that may have locked the United States into a long-term position as the colonial overseer of a distant and troubled land, then this administration's wrongdoing is of far more consequence than Richard Nixon's misdeeds.

Nixon and his aides kept an "enemies list" and turned the White House into a command center for political dirty tricks. They then attempted to cover up their wrongdoing.

Those are serious crimes. But they don't compare with the seriousness of the charges against Bush. If the president deliberately led America into a deadly and costly war under false pretenses, then he has done the nation far more damage than Nixon. Says U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., "The nation's credibility, in my view, is at stake."

Considering the international outcry over the revelations regarding Bush, no one could seriously argue with Corzine's comment.

Yet last week the Republican-led Senate blocked Corzine's effort to establish a 12-member, bipartisan commission to investigate the use of intelligence during the prelude to the war. The 51-45 vote was one of several Iraq-related votes that broke pretty much along party lines last week. Every attempt by Democrats to get answers to questions about the prelude, execution, time line and cost of the war was blocked by Republicans who voted to protect their party's president.

The prioritization of partisanship over principle has been seen before. During the early days of the Watergate controversy, many Republicans in Congress attempted to stall investigations. Eventually, however, responsible Republicans began to break with their scandal-tarnished president. For the most part, Republicans who chose principle over party were rewarded by their constituents with re-election. Those who let partisanship trump statesmanship proved to be far more vulnerable on Election Day.

"The Next Debate: Al Qaeda Link" -- Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon in The New York Times, 7/20/03:

In making its case for war, the administration dismissed the arguments of experts who noted that despite some contacts between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's followers over the years, there was no strong evidence of a substantive relationship. As members of the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999, we closely examined nearly a decade's worth of intelligence and we became convinced, like many of our colleagues in the intelligence community, that the religious radicals of Al Qaeda and the secularists of Baathist Iraq simply did not trust one another or share sufficiently compelling interests to work together.

But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised that the Bush administration had "bulletproof evidence" of a Qaeda-Iraq link, and Secretary of State Colin Powell made a similar case to the United Nations. Such claims now look as questionable as the allegation that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.

In the 14 weeks since the fall of Baghdad, coalition forces have not brought to light any significant evidence demonstrating the bond between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Uncovering such a link should be much easier than finding weapons of mass destruction. Instead of having to inspect hundreds of suspected weapons sites around the country, military and intelligence officials need only comb through the files of Iraq's intelligence agency and a handful of other government ministries.

Our intelligence experts have been doing exactly that since April and so far there has been no report of any proof (and we can assume that any supporting information would have quickly been publicized). Of the more than 3,000 Qaeda operatives arrested around the world, only a handful of prisoners in Guant�namo ? all with an incentive to please their captors ? have claimed there was cooperation between Osama bin Laden's organization and Saddam Hussein's regime, and their remarks have yet to be confirmed by any of the high-ranking Iraqi officials now in American hands.

Indeed, most new reports concerning Al Qaeda and Iraq have been of another nature. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, the two highest-ranking Qaeda operatives in custody, have told investigators that Mr. bin Laden shunned cooperation with Saddam Hussein. A United Nations team investigating global ties of the bin Laden group reported last month that they found no evidence of a Qaeda-Iraq connection.

In addition, one Central Intelligence Agency official told The Washington Post that a review panel of retired intelligence operatives put together by the agency found that although there were some ties among individuals in the two camps, "it was not at all clear there was any coordination or joint activities." And Rand Beers, the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council who resigned earlier this year, has said that on the basis of the intelligence he saw, he did not believe there was a significant relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The Congressional oversight committees evaluating the administration's use of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have said they will also examine whether the administration manipulated information regarding Iraq's involvement in terrorism. The terrorism issue must not be given short shrift because of the current controversy over claims of Iraq's unconventional weapons. The truth is, we knew for decades that Iraq had nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs ? yet it was only after 9/11 that these programs were viewed as an intolerable threat that necessitated a regime change.

"U.S. Air Raids in '02 Prepared for War in Iraq" -- Michael R. Gordon in The New York Times, 7/20/03:

American air war commanders carried out a comprehensive plan to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system before the Iraq war, according to an internal briefing on the conflict by the senior allied air war commander.

Known as Southern Focus, the plan called for attacks on the network of fiber-optic cable that Saddam Hussein's government used to transmit military communications, as well as airstrikes on key command centers, radars and other important military assets.

The strikes, which were conducted from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003, were justified publicly at the time as a reaction to Iraqi violations of a no-flight zone that the United States and Britain established in southern Iraq. But Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, said the attacks also laid the foundations for the military campaign against the Baghdad government. . . .

After General Moseley assumed command toward the end of 2001, however, the American strategy began to change. General Moseley and General Franks believed that the American military needed a plan to weaken the Iraqi air defenses, initially because of the threat to the allied patrols and later to facilitate an offensive.

The first step was to use spy satellites, U-2 planes and reconnaissance drones to identify potential targets.

One major target was the network of fiber-optic cable that transmitted military communications between Baghdad and Basra and Baghdad and Nasiriya. The cables themselves were buried underground and impossible to locate. So the air war commanders focused on the "cable repeater stations," which relayed the signals. From June 2002 until the beginning of the Iraq war, the allies flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq and attacked 349 targets, including the cable stations.

"We were able to figure out that we were getting ahead of this guy and we were breaking them up faster than he could fix them," General Moseley said of the fiber-optic cables. "So then we were able to push it up a little bit and effectively break up the fiber-optic backbone from Baghdad to the south."

During that period before the war, American officials said the strikes were necessary because the Iraqis were shooting more often at allied air patrols. In total, the Iraqis fired on allied aircraft 651 times during the operation. But General Moseley said it was possible that the Iraqi attacks increased because allied planes had stepped up their patrols over Iraq. "We became a little more aggressive based on them shooting more at us, which allowed us to respond more," he said. "Then the question is whether they were shooting at us because we were up there more. So there is a chicken and egg thing here."

"A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein's Weapons" -- Judith Miller in The New York Times, 7/20/03:

On paper, the Pentagon's plan for finding Iraq's unconventional weapons was bold and original.

Four mobile exploitation teams, or MET's, each composed of about 25 soldiers, scientists and weapons experts from several Pentagon agencies, would fan out to chase tips from survey units and combat forces in the field. They would search 578 "suspect sites" in Iraq for the chemical, biological and nuclear components that the Bush administration had cited time and again to justify the war. The Pentagon said the weapons hunters would have whatever they needed ? helicopters, Humvees in case weather grounded the choppers, and secure telecommunications.

But the "ground truth," as soldiers say, was this: chaos, disorganization, interagency feuds, disputes within and among various military units, and shortages of everything from gasoline to soap plagued the postwar search for evidence of Iraq's supposed unconventional weapons. . . .

Interviews with soldiers and government officials over three months with the Pentagon's 75th Exploitation Task Force, known as the XTF, identified a number of problems that might explain why the search has produced so little. The flaws are serious enough, according to some participants, that the searchers might indeed have overlooked weapons or their components ? if they were there to be found.

Some participants said the Bush administration used flawed intelligence to plan and conduct the search. They said planners had assumed that either chemical or biological weapons would be used against American forces in the field, proving their existence to the world. Or they assumed that if the armaments were not used, they would be easy to find.

Some said that promising sites were looted -- or cleared of evidence -- before Americans could search or secure them.

"Because we arrived at sites so late, so often," said Capt. J. Ryan Cutchin, the leader of the team known as MET Bravo, "we may never know what was there, and either walked or was taken away by looters and Baathist elements under the guise of looting." . . .

The intelligence on sites was often stunningly wrong, one senior officer agreed.

"The teams would be given a packet, with pictures and a tentative grid," he said. "They would be told: `Go to this place. You will find a McDonald's there. Look in the fridge. You will find French fries, cheeseburger and Cokes.' And they would go there, and not only was there no fridge and no McDonald's, there was never even a thought of ever putting a McDonald's there. Day after day it was like that."

Throughout their mission, MET units members expressed frustration that they were not permitted to discuss with Iraqi scientists and security officials either the amnesty for war crimes or the sizable monetary rewards that had been authorized to offer in exchange for cooperation, despite the Iraqis' obvious reluctance to participate as long as Mr. Hussein might be alive. Then the MET units were sent home two months before a normal rotation, though they had volunteered to stay.

Officials charged with cultivating Iraqis as sources remained unhappy with raids by Special Forces on their potential sources' homes in the dead of night. "Knocking down a scientist's door at 3 a.m., putting a bag over his head, and flex-cuffing his family while you search for hidden weapons or documents is hardly a way to induce his cooperation," one weapons expert said.

"In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat" -- The New York Times, 7/20/03:

Now, with the failure so far to find prohibited weapons in Iraq, American intelligence officials and senior members of the administration have acknowledged that there was little new evidence flowing into American intelligence agencies in the five years since United Nations inspectors left Iraq, creating an intelligence vacuum.

"Once the inspectors were gone, it was like losing your G.P.S. guidance," added a Pentagon official, invoking as a metaphor the initials of the military's navigational satellites. "We were reduced to dead reckoning. We had to go back to our last fixed position, what we knew in '98, and plot a course from there. With dead reckoning, you're heading generally in the right direction, but you can swing way off to one side or the other." . . .

Richard Kerr, who headed a four-member team of retired C.I.A. officials that reviewed prewar intelligence about Iraq, said analysts at the C.I.A. and other agencies were forced to rely heavily on evidence that was five years old at least. . . .

Intelligence analysts drew heavily "on a base of hard evidence growing out of the lead-up to the first war, the first war itself and then the inspections process," Mr. Kerr said. "We had a rich base of information," he said, and, after the inspectors left, "we drew on that earlier base."

"There were pieces of new information, but not a lot of hard information, and so the products that dealt with W.M.D. were based heavily on analysis drawn out of that earlier period," Mr. Kerr said, using the shorthand for weapons of mass destruction.

Even so, just days before President Bush's State of the Union address in January, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, described the intelligence as not only convincing but up-to-date.

"It is a case grounded in current intelligence," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, "current intelligence that comes not only from sophisticated overhead satellites and our ability to intercept communications, but from brave people who told us the truth at the risk of their lives. We have that; it is very convincing." . . .

The arguments over evidence spilled into public view during the debate about whether the United Nations inspectors should be sent back to Iraq at all. Mr. Cheney had declared in August that returning them to Iraq would be dangerous, that it would create a false sense of security. When the inspectors returned in November, senior administration officials were dismissive of their abilities.

They insisted that American intelligence agencies had better information on Iraq's weapons programs than the United Nations, and would use that data to find Baghdad's weapons after Mr. Hussein's government was toppled. In hindsight, it is now clear just how dependent American intelligence agencies were on the United Nations weapons inspections process. . . .

"Oct. Report Said Defeated Hussein Would Be Threat" -- Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 7/21/03:

Last fall, the administration repeatedly warned in public of the danger that an unprovoked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists.

"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," President Bush said in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."

But declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States.

"Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," one key judgment of the estimate said.

It went on to say that Hussein might decide to take the "extreme step" of assisting al Qaeda in a terrorist attack against the United States if it "would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

The declassified sections of the NIE were offered by the White House to rebut allegations that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The result, however, could be to raise more questions about whether the administration misrepresented the judgments of the intelligence services on another basis for going to war: the threat posed by Hussein as a source of weapons for terrorists.

The NIE's findings also raise concerns about the dangers posed by Hussein, who is believed to be in hiding, and the failure to find any of his alleged stocks of chemical and biological weapons. If such stocks exist, a hotly debated proposition, this is precisely the kind of dangerous situation the CIA and other intelligence services warned about last fall, administration officials said. A senior administration official said yesterday that the U.S. intelligence community does not know either "the extent to which Saddam Hussein has access or control" over the groups that are attacking U.S. forces, or the location of any possible hidden chemical or biological agents or weapons. Asked whether the former Iraqi leader would today use any chemical or biological weapons if he controlled them, the senior official said, "We would not put that past him to do whatever makes our lives miserable." . . .

Friday's declassified material from the NIE gave a much more complete picture of the intelligence in the form of all the key judgments of the intelligence community.

One of the judgments was that Hussein "appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or [chemical or biological weapons] against the United States fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war."

Another judgment was that Iraq would "probably" attempt a clandestine attack against the United States, as mentioned by Bush -- not on "any given day" as the president said Oct. 7, but only "if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable."

Today the situation is changed. Hussein is alive but in hiding, and his alleged stocks of chemical or biological weapons or agents have not been found. Meanwhile, the president and other leaders have yet to mention publicly the intelligence assessment that Hussein may be a potentially bigger threat now than before the United States attacked.

In fact, Bush, in his May 1 speech from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, appeared to take just the opposite position. "We have removed an ally of al Qaeda," Bush said. "No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime."

"Sixteen Little Words, My As*terisk" -- Linda McQuaig in The Toronto Star, 7/20/03:

Are 16 words enough to cause a scandal? Depends on the words.

What if Bush had said the following 16 words in his State of the Union address: "The constitution is null and void. I'm now king. If anyone contests this, bring him on."

There were other misleading statements in that State of the Union address; we'll focus here only on the statement known to be based on a forgery.

CIA director George Tenet has been offered up as the fall guy. After the White House pinned the blame on him, he accepted responsibility for not vetting the false statement from the address. Although, God knows, he tried.

In secret testimony last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tenet made clear he had discouraged the use of the false statement, but that an official from the White House insisted it be included.

So who is that mystery White House official?

Tenet named the official, according to Senator Dick Durbin, who said confidentiality rules prevent him from revealing it. Fair enough.

But no rules prevent George Bush from revealing it. For that matter, isn't Bush hopping mad at this underling who played fast and loose with his presidential credibility -- unless, of course, the underling is that overling, Vice-President Dick Cheney. In which case Bush is probably too scared to raise the matter. (It's also possible that Bush knew about the forgery too.)

Cheney took an unusually keen interest in intelligence about Iraq, paying several visits to the CIA to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat Saddam posed, the London Guardian reported last week. When Cheney wasn't pressuring the CIA personally, his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was. The Guardian noted that the vice-president's hands-on involvement in intelligence was "unprecedented" in recent times.

Cheney also worked closely with a shadow intelligence unit, called the Office of Special Plans, which was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and staffed mostly by right-wingers with no background in intelligence work.

The Guardian noted that, while the CIA's policy is to sort through raw intelligence data from agents and informants around the world and weed out anything unsubstantiated, the shadow intelligence unit was encouraged to hold onto everything, no matter how far-fetched. Intelligence on Iraq was of particular interest.

White House supporters are trying to suggest this is just a case of a minor error slipping through a big bureaucracy, that the administration is, at worst, guilty of sloppiness.

But there's nothing insignificant or haphazard about what happened. Somebody deliberately forged a document and, despite warnings from the head of the CIA, it ended up as a key piece of evidence supporting the president's case for war.

Who did the forgery? Was forgery part of the bag of tricks adopted by the ideologues in the shadow intelligence unit, in their zeal to deliver the more "forward-leaning" interpretation of Saddam's intentions that the vice-president so clearly wanted?

Let's not forget that this administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq, even after U.N. inspectors had scoured the country for months, unable to find evidence of a weapons program.

Brushing aside the inspectors, the United Nations and most of the world, the White House insisted the danger Saddam posed was so great that immediate action was required, and it launched a full military attack on what turned out to be an unarmed country. Thousands died; more are still dying over there.

What we've seen is a lie of staggering import. Or to put it another way: Sixteen little words, my eye.

"Whopper of the Week: Donald Rumsfeld" -- Timothy Noah at Slate.com, 7/10/03:

"Q: Secretary Rumsfeld, when did you know that the reports about [Iraq seeking] uranium coming out of Africa were bogus?

"A: Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available."

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, answering a question posed by Sen. Mark Pryor, D.-Ark., at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services committee, July 10.

"Senate Intel Chair Faults CIA Chief on Iraq Flap " -- Reuters, 7/11/03:

Fri July 11, 2003 03:42 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee criticized the CIA on Friday for "sloppy handling" of faulty information that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, and specifically blamed CIA Director George Tenet.

"So far, I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy handling of the issue from the outset by the CIA," Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas said in a statement.

Every civilization since the beginning of man has recognized the need for marriage. This country and healthy societies around the world give marriage special legal protection for a vital reason -- it is the institution that ensures the society's future through the upbringing of children. Furthermore, it's just common sense that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

-- Rick Santorum in
USA Today, 7/11/03

He said that as late as about 10 days before President Bush's January State of the Union speech, the CIA was "still asserting that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Africa and that those attempts were further evidence of Saddam's efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program." . . .

"I have seen no documentation that indicates that the CIA had reversed itself after January 17th and prior to the State of the Union," Roberts said.

"If the CIA had changed its position, it was incumbent on the director of Central Intelligence to correct the record and bring it to the immediate attention of the president. It appears that he did not," Roberts said.

"This is not the type of responsibility that can be delegated to midlevel officials. The director of Central Intelligence is the president's principal adviser on intelligence matters. He should have told the president and it appears that he failed to do so," Roberts said.

A CIA spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

"No Mistakes Were Made" -- Eleanor Clift in Newsweek, 7/11/03:

HOW CAN BUSH fix the mess in Iraq if he denies any missteps? This administration's unwillingness to ever admit a mistake makes it unlikely it will expand the force size in Iraq, take responsibility for the phony intelligence Bush touted as a prelude to war or eat enough humble pie to get military and financial help from other nations. The White House won't acknowledge anything that might chip away at Bush?s commander-in-chief image. That?s the nature of the reelection machine that Karl Rove has constructed in his role as Bush's consigliere. To admit flaws risks losing the luster of the wartime president.

Bush's insecurities are at the heart of it. Haunted by his father's defeat and the accidental nature of his own presidency, Bush never wants to hand his enemies ammunition. He can't let cracks appear or the whole edifice could crumble. The moment Bush landed on the USS Lincoln, he was caught in his own net of hubris. The juvenile taunt "Bring 'em on" diminishes the seriousness of sending men and women into an urban guerilla battle that nobody prepared them for. American soldiers in Iraq are going on the record with reporters to say how unhappy they are, and how vulnerable they feel. You don't do that in the military unless the conditions are dire. ...

The drip-drip of bad news from Iraq is reflected in the polls, though it does not yet pose a political problem for Bush. A majority of voters dismiss the wrangling over what Bush knew and when he knew it as partisan. But America's good name is under attack around the world, and Bush's credibility has foreign-policy consequences, making it much more difficult to undertake other interventions. The hawkish neocons who urged the war on Iraq are dismayed over what's happening because Iraq was supposed to be easy. "Iraq was the low-hanging fruit," says a Republican Senate aide, who backed the war. Taking down Saddam was a test case for the real thing, regime change in Iran. Now the administration is standing down on its rhetoric toward Iran, a welcome intrusion of reality in Bush's fantasy presidency.

"Democrats Question President's Iraq Policy Amid Controversy Over Pre-War Intelligence" -- Jim Malone at Voice of America, 7/11/03:

Continuing attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq combined with a growing controversy over pre-war intelligence have prompted opposition Democrats to raise new questions about President Bush's foreign policy record. There was a bit of a sea change in Washington this week. The wide public-backing of the president's foreign policy had long intimidated Democrats. But rising casualties among U.S. troops in Iraq and a White House admission of faulty pre-war intelligence have Democrats on the offensive. . . .

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 23 percent of those surveyed felt the military effort in Iraq is going "very well." That is down from 61 percent in April. But the same poll also found that 66 percent of those asked still favor a major U.S. commitment to rebuilding Iraq.

"When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy" -- Thomas Powers in The New York Times, 7/13/03:

Since President Bush announced the end of major military operations on May 1, it has become increasingly clear that the Iraq war is not over, that there is a concerted campaign of resistance and that Mr. Hussein remains a formidable foe. Over the last 10 days the chief American official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has frequently stressed the importance of capturing or killing Mr. Hussein.

The campaign to kill him, frankly admitted and discussed by high officials in the White House, Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, has committed the United States for the first time to public, personalized, open-ended warfare in the classic mode of Middle Eastern violence -- an eye for an eye, a life for a life. . . .

Realists may scoff that war is war and that things have always been this way, but in fact personalized killing has a way of deepening the bitterness of war without bringing conflict closer to resolution. In April 1986 President Reagan authorized an air raid on the home of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya that spared him but killed his daughter. The Reagan administration never acknowledged that Colonel Qaddafi, personally, was the target, nor did it publicly speculate two years later that Libya's bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, was Colonel Qaddafi's revenge for the death of his daughter. But the administration got the message: after Lockerbie, Washington relied on legal action to settle the score.

It is impossible to know how, or if, Mr. Hussein's supporters will find a way to retaliate for the American campaign to kill the deposed Iraqi leader, but that effort inevitably reopens a long-simmering American argument over assassination, never embraced openly in so many words but never repudiated once and for all.

Despite much tough talk of killing enemies since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration still shrinks from using the word assassination, and much of the public continues to oppose it as both dangerous and wrong -- dangerous because it commits the United States to a campaign of murder and countermurder, and wrong because hunting people down, however it plays in the movies, excuses murder by calling it something else. . . .

"Removing Saddam" has been the stated goal of the administration for more than a year, and last fall Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said war with Iraq could be avoided at "the cost of one bullet." This open discussion of killing Mr. Hussein marks a profound retreat from the longstanding insistence that the United States did not and would not use assassination as a tool of state.

"The Democrats' Brewing Civil War" -- Michelle Goldberg at salon.com, 7/12/03:

"Every two years at election time, the party goes through an agony of self-reflection and recently self-reproach," says Robert Reich, a prominent progressive who served as Clinton's secretary of labor. "They ask: Should we move right and get more of the so-called suburban swing voter or should we have the courage of our progressive convictions and generate more enthusiasm among the base? What's left out of the debate is an acknowledgment that half of adult Americans who are qualified to vote no longer do so. The only way to get them into the voting booths is to give them something to vote for, a real choice, real ideals and a strong and bold vision of where the country is and where it should be going." . . .

"The typical American shares the values of most liberal activists and progressives," says Reich, "but the typical American has been fed a nonstop diet of lies and angry, snide, resentful, bitter diatribes by right-wing radio talk-show hosts and right-wing TV talk-show hosts. The typical American doesn't know what the facts are. He believes that the typical family is getting a $1,000 tax cut. He believes Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11. He doesn't know that Afghanistan is falling apart, he doesn't know that we're completely unprepared for a terrorist attack. He hasn't been told that most of the corporate scandals of 2002 could happen again because most of the legislation never went anywhere."

Reich is careful not to denigrate such Americans. "These are very intelligent people," he says, "but if you're fed nothing but lies and resentment mixed in with the sort of targets that have nothing to do with the reasons your finances and prospects are poor, you are probably going to buy some of this Orwellian trash. You may be quite thoughtful, but you're not superhuman. Unless or until the Democrats tell it like it is and also stand up for what they believe, America is not going to wake up."

Reich's comment gets to the heart of the debate. There's a sense among activist Democrats that many voters are asleep and that only a blunt, uncompromising message can rouse them. The DLC, meanwhile, is convinced that liberals are a minority not because most Americans don't understand them, but because they disagree with them.

If you start from the premise that Americans have been duped, you can sound like you're "telling people they're stupid for not understanding what we understand," says the DLC's Kilgore. "There's a certain tone of condescension."

But declining to challenge voters also can be a kind of condescension. "I think it's important to keep a sense of humor and be upbeat and even optimistic, but we've got to tell it like it is and also talk about our values," says Reich. "We can't be defensive. We can't assume, as the DLC does, that somehow we're out of step with average Americans."

"CIA Chief Takes Rap for Bush's False War Claim" -- Suzanne Goldenberg and Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian, 7/12/03:

The CIA chief, George Tenet, yesterday took the blame for President George Bush's discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to procure uranium from Africa.

Mr Tenet's admission of error was made at the end of a day when the CIA chief came under attack, and after a week when the furore over false intelligence appeared to be reaching a critical point.

In a statement, Mr Tenet said he had been wrong to allow Mr Bush to include the line that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material from Niger in his state of the union address in January. . . .

By shouldering the blame, Mr Tenet was trying to limit Mr Bush's exposure to a controversy that is assuming ever larger proportions.

With the furore threatening to eclipse Mr Bush's tour of Africa, the president and his national security adviser, Con doleezza Rice, disassociated the White House from the uranium claim yesterday.

Ms Rice insisted the agency had cleared the claim in the president's speech, adding that if the CIA director had any misgivings, "he did not make them known".

Hours later, Mr Tenet agreed that he was responsible. "Let me be clear about several things right up front," he said. "First, CIA approved the president's state of the union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound." . . .

Earlier yesterday, the Republican chairman of the intelligence committee, Pat Roberts, made it clear that he held Mr Tenet entirely to blame. He went on to question Mr Tenet's loyalty, accusing the CIA of seeking to damage President Bush through a series of leaked stories from anonymous officials that have fuelled speculation over the administration's flawed claims on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in Oct.; Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear" -- Walter Pincus and Mike Allen in The Washington Post, 7/13/03:

CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.

Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.

The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech.

It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to Congress when Tenet had intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech. That failure may underlie his action Friday in taking responsibility for not stepping in again to question the reference. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency," he said in Friday's statement.

"Blair Ignored CIA Weapons Warning" -- Kamal Ahmed in The Observer, 7/13/03:

Britain and America suffered a complete breakdown in relations over vital evidence against Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, refusing to share information and keeping each other in the dark over key elements of the case against the Iraqi dictator.

In a remarkable letter released last night, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, reveals a catalogue of disputes between the two countries, lending more ammunition to critics of the war and exerting fresh pressure on the Prime Minister.

The letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which investigated the case for war against Iraq, reveals that Britain ignored a request from the CIA to remove claims that Saddam was trying to buy nuclear material from Niger, despite concerns that the allegations were bogus. It also details a government decision to block information going to the CIA because it was too sensitive.

As diplomatic relations between America and Britain become increasingly strained over Iraq's WMD, Straw said that the Government had separate evidence of the Niger link, which it has not shared with the US. . . .

Straw's letter reveals:

• That evidence given to the CIA by the former US ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson - that Niger officials had denied any link - was never shared with the British.
• That Foreign Office officials were left to read reports of Wilson's findings in the press only days before they were raised as part of the committee's inquiry into the war.
• That when the CIA, having seen a draft of the September dossier on Iraq's WMD, demanded that the Niger claim be removed, it was ignored because the agency did not back it up with 'any explanation'.

Although publicly the two governments are trying to maintain a united front, the admission two days ago by the head of the CIA, George Tenet, that President Bush should never have made the claim about the Niger connection to Iraq, has left British officials exposed.

"The Niger Connection" -- Peter Beaumont and Edward Helmore in The Observer, 7/13/03:

Boiled down to their bare bones, the allegations go like this: with deep suspicion at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the CIA over allegations of Iraqi attempts to procure uranium ore from Niger, the CIA was getting cold feet. What evidence they did have, as Tenet admitted on Friday, was fragmentary.

So, in early 2000, the CIA dispatched a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, to investigate the claims. He rapidly concluded that the alleged Iraqi procurement programme did not exist, and at most Baghdad had merely attempted to discuss improved trade relations with Niger in the late 1990s.

Wilson and the CIA became convinced that some evidence of the Niger connection was based on crudely forged documents that agency sources suggested had been obtained by Italian authorities and passed on to Britain which - the same sources told the US media - passed the forgeries on to the CIA. When those documents emerged after Bush's State of the Union address, they would be quickly exposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as the confections that they were.

Crucially, despite knowing of the dubious nature of the Niger connection, the CIA did not impress upon the White House its serious doubts. Instead, it allowed the President, citing 'British intelligence' as proof, to claim the Niger connection as hard evidence of Saddam's efforts to rebuild a nuclear arsenal.

If Tenet's account is true, it is doubly embarrassing, for the CIA had made its reservations clear elsewhere, if not to Bush.

The previous year, ahead of Blair's September 2002 dossier setting out the British case against Saddam, the CIA told London that the Niger claim was deeply questionable. And it also warned US Secretary of State Colin Powell against using the Niger evidence before he made his powerful presentation about the Iraqi threat to the UN in February, just weeks after Bush's State of the Union address.

In other words, the CIA told everyone about its doubts except the White House.

What is most revealing is Tenet's admission that the central claim was left in Bush's speech because it had been attributed to British intelligence. Agency officials 'in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct, i.e. that the British Government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa,' Tenet said.

'This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed.'

But there is a big question hanging over Tenet's account. For Britain vehemently rejects American claims that the Niger link was based solely on the forged documents or that it supplied any intelligence on the Niger connection to the CIA.

'The information in the British Government's September dossier regarding Niger categorically did not come from the forged Italian documents; it came from our own source. That information was not passed on to the US,' said an intelligence source last week. 'It was an entirely separate and credible source.'

On one crucial issue Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in his letter released yesterday, does agree with the US version of events. He admits that the CIA did warn Britain against including claims on the Niger connection in the Government's September dossier on WMD.

'The media have reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about the [Niger] element of the September dossier,' he said. 'This is correct. However, the US comment was unsupported and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US.'

The consequence of the gulf between these two positions is a new crisis over the intelligence on Iraq that is no longer limited to either just Britain or the US. For the first time Washington and London now point their fingers at each other.

"National House of Waffles" -- Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, 7/13/03:

Mr. Tenet, in his continuing effort to ingratiate himself to his bosses, agreed to take the fall, trying to minimize a year's worth of war-causing warping of intelligence as a slip of the keyboard. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," he said, in 15 words that were clearly written for him on behalf of the president. But it won't fly.

It was Ms. Rice's responsibility to vet the intelligence facts in the president's speech and take note of the red alert the tentative Tenet was raising. Colin Powell did when he set up camp at the C.I.A. for a week before his U.N. speech, double-checking what he considered unsubstantiated charges that the Cheney chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and other hawks wanted to sluice into his talk.

When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence, it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this "evidence" could not be attributed to American intelligence because the C.I.A. had already debunked it.

Ms. Rice did not throw out the line, even though the C.I.A. had warned her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in.

And that had to be Dick Cheney's office. Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president's office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful.

"President Defends Allegation on Iraq" -- Dana Priest and Dana Milbank in The Washington Post, 7/15/03:

President Bush yesterday defended the "darn good" intelligence he receives, continuing to stand behind a disputed allegation about Iraq's nuclear ambitions as new evidence surfaced indicating the administration had early warning that the charge could be false.

Bush said the CIA's doubts about the charge -- that Iraq sought to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore in Africa -- were "subsequent" to the Jan. 28 State of the Union speech in which Bush made the allegation. Defending the broader decision to go to war with Iraq, the president said the decision was made after he gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."

Bush's position was at odds with those of his own aides, who acknowledged over the weekend that the CIA raised doubts that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger more than four months before Bush's speech.

The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective. . . .

The president's remarks yesterday came as evidence emerged that the administration had information that seemed to guarantee that Iraq probably could not acquire nuclear material from Niger. A four-star general, who was asked to go to Niger last year to inquire about the security of Niger's uranium, told The Washington Post yesterday that he came away convinced the country's stocks were secure. The findings of Marine Gen. Carlton W. Fulford Jr. were passed up to Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- though it was unclear whether they reached officials in the White House.

A spokesman for Myers said last night that the general has "no recollection of the information" but did not doubt that it had been forwarded to him. "Given the time frame of 16 months ago, information concerning Iraq not obtaining uranium from Niger would not have been as pressing as other subjects," said Capt. Frank Thorp, the chairman's spokesman. . . .

Fulford's impressions, while not conclusive, were similar to those of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who traveled to Niger for the CIA in February 2002 to interview Niger officials about the uranium claim and came away convinced it was not true.

"The Buck Stops Here: Bush Shifts the Blame for His Iraq Whopper" -- William Saletan at slate.com, 7/14/03.

"Who Is Buried in Bush's Speech?" -- Michael Kinsley at slate.com, 7/14/03:

Linguists note that the question, "Who lied in George Bush's State of the Union speech" bears a certain resemblance to the famous conundrum, "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" They speculate that the two questions may have parallel answers.

"16 Words, and Counting" -- Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times, 7/15/03:

After I wrote a month ago about the Niger uranium hoax in the State of the Union address, a senior White House official chided me gently and explained that there was more to the story that I didn't know.

Yup. And now it's coming out.

Based on conversations with people in the intelligence community, this picture is emerging: the White House, eager to spice up the State of the Union address, recklessly resurrected the discredited Niger tidbit. The Central Intelligence Agency objected, and then it and the National Security Council negotiated a new wording, attributing it all to the Brits. It felt less dishonest pinning the falsehood on the cousins.

What troubles me is not that single episode, but the broader pattern of dishonesty and delusion that helped get us into the Iraq mess -- and that created the false expectations undermining our occupation today. Some in the administration are trying to make George Tenet the scapegoat for the affair. But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney's resignation.

Condi Rice says she first learned of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger during a TV interview, presumably when George Stephanopoulos asked her on "This Week" on June 8 about a column by me describing the trip. (Condi, you're breaking my heart -- you didn't read that column itself? How about if I fax you copies of everything I write, so you don't miss any, and you fax me everything you write?)

"Mission to Niger" -- Robert Novack, 7/14/03; archived at townhall.com:

WASHINGTON -- The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.

Wilson's report that an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger was highly unlikely was regarded by the CIA as less than definitive, and it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it. Certainly, President Bush did not, prior to his 2003 State of the Union address, when he attributed reports of attempted uranium purchases to the British government. That the British relied on forged documents made Wilson's mission, nearly a year earlier, the basis of furious Democratic accusations of burying intelligence though the report was forgotten by the time the president spoke.

Reluctance at the White House to admit a mistake has led Democrats ever closer to saying the president lied the country into war. Even after a belated admission of error last Monday, finger-pointing between Bush administration agencies continued. Messages between Washington and the presidential entourage traveling in Africa hashed over the mission to Niger.

Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." President George H.W. Bush the next year named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

"Unexplained Leaps" -- Los Angeles Times editorial, 7/15/03:

Other statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program should not be buried in the Niger flap. Many of those claims, although not quite as clear-cut, appear to have been exaggerated. They raise broader questions about the competence of the CIA and about the pressures exerted on the agency.

The most sweeping assessment of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's intentions was contained in October's CIA report "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction." In it, the CIA made a number of allegations about Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile programs. The key judgments:

• If left unchecked, Baghdad would probably have a nuclear weapon this decade. If it got enough "fissile material," i.e. uranium, it could build a bomb "within a year."
• Baghdad had begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, including mustard, sarin and VX gases.
• Every aspect of Hussein's biological weapons programs was "active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War."
• Baghdad was developing missiles capable of delivering weapons payloads, including biological agents, to other nations.

Today, on its Web site, the best the agency can muster is a few pictures of suspected mobile weapons labs. Given this paucity, the jump in the level of CIA alarm from 2001 to 2002 is puzzling. In 2001's report, the CIA told Congress: "We believe that Iraq has probably continued at least low-level theoretical [research and development] associated with its nuclear program." The 2001 report also said "we are concerned that Iraq may again be producing [biological weapons] agents." Last year, the assertion of such a program was categorical.

The CIA was right to be concerned about Iraq's intentions, but in 2001 it was not describing an imminent threat to U.S. security. It is far from clear that Congress or ordinary Americans, not to mention the British government, would have supported war to oust a nasty dictator. That is the administration's real problem.

George W. Bush on why he went to war:

Hussein wouldn't let inspectors in (whitehouse.gov transcript, 7/14/03) (see also this):

The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful.

Harpers Weekly Review, 7/15/03

"Silence of the Hawks" -- Marianne Means in the London Day, 7/17/03:

Top Bush administration officials are not winning their frantic battle to close off the escalating debate about how and why a bogus claim about the so-called "imminent" danger posed by Iraq's nuclear program got into the nation's most important annual presidential speech. They had counted on the furor to subside after CIA director George Tenet took the blame. But, as Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska wryly observed, "This was not a one-man show." High-ranking foreign policy advisers had the power to pressure Tenet and many deeply troubling questions about their roles remain unanswered.

The administration's evasions, shifting rationales, obfuscations and attempted distractions suggest that the credibility problem originates at a very high level - national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney or all three. The president has not taken responsibility nor apologized for including misleading material in his speech. Instead he tried to pass the buck to Tenet, who had actually objected to making the dubious claim but was persuaded to accept a technical change in the wording.

For his part, Bush was incoherent Monday about his own decision-making process. He claimed there were no doubts about the alleged Iraqi effort to purchase uranium prior to his speech and that his decision to invade was made not because of worry over nuclear weapons but because he had given Saddam Hussein "a chance to let inspectors in and he would not let them in." Neither assertion is true. . . .

In the current confusion, all the participants but one have defended the war, often giving conflicting accounts of what happened. Only Cheney has gone underground again. He has had nothing to say. Before the war, by contrast, he was one of the most forceful hawks warning that Hussein was such a danger "time is not on our side."

"Poison Stockpiles Probably Don't Exist, Says Chief US Inspector" -- Tim Reid in The London Times, 7/17/03:

Large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons probably do not exist in Iraq, and prewar intelligence reports were "assumptions" based on "fragmentary information", the Bush Administration's own chief weapons inspector in Baghdad has conceded.

David Kay, appointed by the CIA to lead the US search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, told leaders of the House Intelligence Committee that only "bits of evidence" about WMD programmes were slowly emerging.

The former UN weapons inspector's comments increased the political pressure on the White House as the controversy grew over President Bush's prewar claims.

The committee's Republican and Democrat leaders, who disclosed Dr Kay's assessment in a report on their recent trip to Iraq, are to hold a public hearing next week into allegations that prewar intelligence was manipulated. . . .

The State of the Union speech was not a "one-man show", Chuck Hagel, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said.

"There's a cloud hanging over this Administration," he said, adding that Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's National Security Adviser, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, and Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, were all involved in decisions on intelligence.

He said that Americans needed to know: did the US base its reasoning for war on "faulty intelligence or abused intelligence?" Arlen Specter, another Republican senator, also questioned White House attempts to blame Mr Tenet. "As President Harry S. Truman said, 'The buck stops with the President of the United States'," he said. A CBS News poll indicated that 56 per cent of Americans now believe that the Administration lied or concealed elements of what it knew about Iraq's weapons.

"'Guerrilla' War Acknowledged" -- Vernon Loeb in The Washington Post, 7/17/03:

The U.S. military's new commander in Iraq acknowledged for the first time yesterday that American troops are engaged in a "classical guerrilla-type" war against remnants of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and said Baathist attacks are growing in organization and sophistication.

The statements by Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, in his first Pentagon briefing since taking charge of the U.S. Central Command last week, were in sharp contrast with earlier statements by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. . . .

Abizaid offered an expansive and troubling assessment of conditions on the ground in Iraq. In addition to the guerrilla campaign being waged by the Baathists, he cited a resurgence of Ansar al-Islam, a fundamentalist group the State Department says is tied to al Qaeda, and the appearance of either al Qaeda or al Qaeda "look-alike" fighters on the battlefield.

The Baathist attacks, most troubling to U.S. forces, he said, are being staged by former mid-level Iraqi intelligence officials and Special Republican Guard personnel, who have organized cells at the regional level and demonstrated the ability to attack U.S. personnel with improvised explosives and tactical maneuvers.

These Iraqi forces, Abizaid said, "are conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us. It's low-intensity conflict in our doctrinal terms, but it's war however you describe it."

Abizaid's remarks were in sharp contrast to those of Rumsfeld, his boss, who insisted from the same lectern 21/2 weeks ago that the U.S. military was not involved in a guerrilla war and who said as recently as Sunday on ABC News that the fighting in Iraq did not fit the definition of guerrilla war.

While Rumsfeld said that he did not have any good evidence that the Iraqi attacks were being coordinated at the regional level, Abizaid said yesterday that there is regional organization and that it is possible that these regional organizations could become connected throughout the country.

"Tenet Says He Didn't Know about Claim" -- Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 7/17/03:

CIA Director George J. Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee yesterday that his staff did not bring to his attention a questionable statement about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address.

But Tenet told the senators during a nearly five-hour session behind closed doors that he takes responsibility for the now-famous 16-word sentence in the speech because an agency official had approved it after negotiations with the White House, according to congressional and administration sources who attended the session.

"Members were stunned," one Democratic senator in the meeting said, "because he said he basically wasn't aware of the sentence until recently." . . .

Yesterday's session was originally scheduled to permit Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) to pursue with the CIA director whether the agency had supplied U.N. weapons inspectors adequate information about possible weapons sites in Iraq; those questions took up nearly one hour of the meeting, congressional sources said. Levin has said that the number of key sites listed in CIA documents far exceeded the number given to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, though Tenet has publicly testified that all the major ones had been given.

"Bush Faced Dwindling Data on Iraq Nuclear Bid" -- Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 7/16/03:

In recent days, as the Bush administration has defended its assertion in the president's State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium, officials have said it was only one bit of intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.

But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.

By Jan. 28, in fact, the intelligence report concerning Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa -- although now almost entirely disproved -- was the only publicly unchallenged element of the administration's case that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. That may explain why the administration strived to keep the information in the speech and attribute it to the British, even though the CIA had challenged it earlier.

"The Spies Who Pushed for War" -- Julian Borger in The Guardian, 7/17/03:

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.

The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war. . . .

The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.

Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title. . . .

Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise. . . .

The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.

In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.

"Core of Weapons Case Crumbling" -- Paul Reynolds at BBC News Online:

Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true. . . .

The nine main conclusions and the broad evidence which has emerged about them are these:

1. "Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents."

No evidence of Iraq's useable capability has been found in terms of manufacturing plants, bombs, rockets or actual chemical or biological agents, nor any sign of recent production.

A mysterious truck has been found which the CIA says is a mobile biological facility but this has not been accepted by all experts.

2. "Saddam continues to attach great importance to the possession of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles... He is determined to retain these capabilities."

He may well have attached great importance to the possession of such weapons but none has been found. The meaning of the word "capability" is now key to this.

If the US and UK governments can show that Iraq maintained an active expertise, amounting to a "programme", they will claim their case has been made that Iraq violated UN resolutions.

3. "Iraq can deliver chemical and biological agents using an extensive range of shells, bombs, sprayers and missiles."

Nothing major has been found so far. There was one aircraft adapted with a sprayer but its capability was small.

4. "Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons... Uranium has been sought from Africa."

The UN watchdog the IAEA said there was no evidence for this up to the start of the war and none has been found since. It is possible, though, that a case could be made from a shopping list of items needed for such a programme.

These include vacuum pumps, magnets, winding and balancing machines - all listed in the British dossier. No details about these purchasing attempts have been provided.

A claim that aluminium tubes were sought for this process was not wholly accepted by the British assessment though it was by the American and has subsequently not been proved.

The uranium claim is currently under question, though the British Government stands by its allegation.

5. "Iraq possesses extended-range versions of the Scud ballistic missile."

No Scuds have been found. The British said Iraq might have up to 20, the CIA said up to 12.

6. "Iraq's current military planning specifically envisages the use of chemical and biological weapons."

That may have been the case but direct evidence from serving Iraqi officers will be needed to prove it.

7. "The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons (chemical and biological) within 45 minutes of a decision to do so."

The 45 minute claim is currently under question. It is said to come from "a single source" probably a defector or Iraqi officer. It has not been proven.

8. "Iraq... is already taking steps to conceal and disperse sensitive equipment."

This is a focus of the current American and British investigation being carried out in Iraq by the Iraq Survey Group. One Iraqi scientist has come forward to say that he hid blueprints of centrifuges under his roses but that was in 1991.

If a pattern of concealment can be established, it would add to the credibility of the allegations that Iraq wanted to defy the UN.

9. "Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programme are well funded."

Evidence will be needed from serving Iraqi officials backed up by documents. Again, if a pattern of funding can be established, a case against Iraq could be made but if the actual programmes did not exist, was the funding of much use and in any case, how much was it?

"The Peace from Hell" -- Molly Ivins at workingforchange.com, 7/15/03:

Now is not the time to stand back timidly hoping it will work out well in the end. The population of Baghdad is broiling through the 115-degree summer without electricity or water for much of the time. Given the background poverty and generally hideous conditions, the place is a major riot waiting to happen.

As we have known ever since the Kerner Commission Report, all it takes is a couple of bad policing incidents to set one off. It is more than painfully apparent that the Pentagon did somewhere between inadequate to zero planning for the occupation, despite the equally apparent fact that this war was settled on more than a year in advance and then intelligence was bent to support it.

Hugh Parmer (formerly of Fort Worth), head of the American Refugee Committee (ARC), was in Iran and Iraq at the beginning of the summer, the first NGO (non-governmental organization) to go in because ARC had privately funded relief supplies. He was fairly shaken by what he found.

Among other things, the crack disaster-relief team he had created while he was with USAID under President Clinton was sitting around filing their fingernails because the military was rejecting all advice from civilians in favor of doing it their way. Since the military is in this mess precisely because it is not well-trained at peacekeeping, you'd think it'd have enough sense to ask people who've been there and done that. That would include the United Nations and NATO.

"U.S. May Seek U.N. Assistance in Volatile Iraq" -- Paul Richter and Esther Schrader in The Los Angeles Times, 7/17/03:

Faced with mounting casualties and costs, the Bush administration said Wednesday that it was talking with foreign leaders about broadening U.N. authority in Iraq, even as a key commander said the Pentagon would extend the tours of war-weary U.S. troops to a full year to fight what has become a guerrilla war.

Until now, the administration has sought to limit U.N. activities in Iraq to humanitarian relief and has sought assistance from other countries on a nation-by-nation basis. A U.S. decision to go back to the United Nations would mark a fundamental shift in an approach that now gives the United States full control � and blame � for whatever happens in the volatile country. . . .

Some U.S. lawmakers and foreign policy experts have been predicting that the challenges of the mission would lead the United States to make an about-face, and grant the United Nations a greater role.

The United States military is now spending about $3.9 billion a month in Iraq, and more than $800 million a month in Afghanistan. If casualty rates continue, the U.S. will soon have lost more soldiers since major military operations ended May 1 than it did in the period before.

"I think this ultimately will end up with peacekeeping forces out there under a United Nations mandate, which will necessitate a larger U.N. role in the political process too," said Nancy Soderberg, a vice president of the consulting firm International Crisis Group in New York and a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration.

One senior Senate aide said the proposal to draw in the United Nations certainly had support within the State Department and might also have some support from Pentagon officials who might "be looking for an exit strategy" from Iraq.

Democratic lawmakers have been making ever-louder demands that the administration turn to the United Nations, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for help in the rebuilding effort. . . .

In his remarks, Powell said that "there are some nations who have expressed the desire for more of a mandate from the United Nations, and I am in conversations with some ministers about this."

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in an appearance in New York, said the question was "not just an issue for Germany and France. Other nations are grappling with the issue, and the question has been posed as to whether or not Security Council action could improve the situation."

"$455 Billion -- and Counting" -- Washington Post editorial, 7/16/03:

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION projected yesterday that the federal budget deficit will reach a stomach-churning $455 billion this year and $475 billion in fiscal 2004; the sad part is, as terrifyingly large as those numbers sound, that's not the worst of it. Even scarier than the deficits this year and next, and even more troubling for the country's long-term economic health, is that large deficits appear here to stay -- sapping the economy and piling on debt that will have to be paid by generations to come.

Just two years ago, the administration was projecting a surplus of $334 billion for this fiscal year. In February, the administration estimated that this year's deficit would be a "mere" $304 billion; the new estimate is 50 percent higher. In explaining how things deteriorated so quickly, the Bush administration and its allies point fingers in various directions -- the recession, the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, the cost of the war in Iraq -- and all of these contain a significant element of truth. In particular, the lagging economy has resulted in a dramatic falloff in tax receipts that, according to the Office of Management and Budget, accounts for more than half of this year's shortfall. But this omits a major culprit: the administration's reckless tax cuts. As OMB itself estimates, these account for 23 percent of the change since its 2001 projection, or $177 billion. In other words, without the tax cuts, the deficit this year would be $278 billion. The new OMB director, Joshua B. Bolten, said yesterday that the tax cuts were "not the problem," but "part of the solution." Some of the cuts may have provided a short-term boost, but the long-term price is far too high.

How bad are these deficits? The administration argues that, viewed in historical terms, the deficit is not that big. "A legitimate subject of concern," Mr. Bolten said. During the Reagan administration, the deficit hit a record 6 percent of gross domestic product; the administration points out that this year's projection would be 4.2 percent of GDP. But if the Social Security surplus isn't included in the calculation, the deficit will be $614 billion, or 5.6 percent of GDP. In addition, the deficit could be worse than the administration projects; for one thing, its figures don't include the costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, running at about $5 billion a month.

The far bigger problems, though, are down the road. The administration projects that things will improve dramatically after the next two years, with deficits dropping to 1.7 percent of GDP by 2008. These figures benefit from projected spending levels that other budget experts see as entirely unrealistic. Moreover, this analysis ignores costs that will kick in later. The administration's projections conveniently cut off in 2008, before many of the costs of the tax cuts start to pile up -- especially if the administration gets its way and the supposedly temporary cuts are made permanent. Its projections also ignore the cost of fixing the alternative minimum tax, and the larger problem of dealing with Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Bolten's former colleagues at Goldman Sachs project deficits totaling $4.5 trillion over the next decade.

The Concord Coalition had it right in a report released just before these awful new numbers. The current approach, it said, "goes a step beyond deficits caused by understandable temporary factors. It is a deliberate decision to risk deficits throughout the coming decade. And it comes despite the fact that the only plan for dealing with the fiscal pressure of the boomers' retirement in the following decade is to run even bigger deficits. This fiscally irresponsible policy rates a failing grade."

Harpers Weekly Review, 7/1/03

"Breaking the Army" -- Michael O'Hanlon in The Washington Post, 7/3/03:

After criticizing the Clinton administration for overdeploying and overusing the country's military in the 1990s, the Bush administration is now doing exactly the same thing -- except on a much larger scale. Hordes of active-duty troops and reservists may soon leave the service rather than subject themselves to a life continually on the road. Much more than transforming the armed forces or relocating overseas bases, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must solve this problem before the Bush administration breaks the American military.

The problem is most acute for the Army. Even as most Marines, sailors and Air Force personnel go home to a grateful nation, the Army still has more than 185,000 troops deployed in and around Iraq. Another 10,000 are in Afghanistan. More than 25,000 troops are in Korea; some 5,000 are in the Balkans; and dozens here and hundreds there are on temporary assignments around the world. Nearly all of these soldiers are away from their home bases and families.

This total of nearly 250,000 deployed troops must be generated from an Army of just over 1 million. The active-duty force numbers 480,000, of which fewer than 320,000 are easily deployable at any given moment. The Army Reserve and Army National Guard together include 550,000 troops, many of whom already have been called up at least once since 9/11.

Deployment demands are likely to remain great, even if Rumsfeld and Bush hope otherwise. The Pentagon is lining up 20,000 to 30,000 allied troops to help in Iraq come September, from countries such as Poland and Italy and Ukraine. Unfortunately, as recent events underscore, the overall mission will still likely require nearly 200,000 coalition forces. That means 125,000 to 150,000 U.S. troops could still be needed for a year or more -- with 50,000 to 75,000 Americans remaining in and around Iraq come 2005 and 2006 if past experience elsewhere is a guide.

As a result, a typical soldier spending 2003 in Iraq may come home this winter only to be deployed again in late 2004 or 2005. The typical reservist might be deployed for another 12 months over the next few years. These burdens are roughly twice what is sustainable.

"What I Didn't Find in Africa" -- Joseph C. Wilson 4th in The New York Times, 7/6/03 (reproduced at commondreams.org):

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charg? d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and S?o Tom? and Pr?ncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.

It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake ? a form of lightly processed ore ? by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.

The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq ? and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.

(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors ? they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government ? and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)

Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.

I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program ? all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.

But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.

Bush tells Mahmoud Abbas why he went to war ("PM Abbas Tells Hamas 'Road Map Is a Life Saver for Us,'" -- Arnon Regular in Ha'aretz, 7/7/03):

God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.

"Who Lost the WMD?" -- Massimo Calabresi and Timothy J. Burger in Time, 6/29/03:

Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.

Eric Hobsbawm,
"Only in America" (Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/4/03):

The details in the great carpet of the U.S.A. have changed, and are constantly changing, but its basic pattern remains remarkably stable in the short run.

As a historian I know that behind this apparent shifting stability, large and long-term changes are taking place, perhaps fundamental ones. Nevertheless, they are concealed by the deliberate resistance to change of American public institutions and procedures, and the habits of American life, as well as what Pierre Bourdieu called in more general terms its habitus, or way of doing things. Forced into the straitjacket of an 18th-century Constitution reinforced by two centuries of Talmudic exegesis by the lawyers, the theologians of the republic, the institutions of the U.S.A. are far more frozen into immobility than those of almost all other states. It has so far even postponed such minor changes as the election of an Italian, or Jew, let alone a woman, as head of government. But it has also made the government of the U.S.A. largely immune to great men, or indeed to anybody, taking great decisions, since rapid, effective national decision-making, not least by the president, is almost impossible. The United States, at least in its public life, is a country that is geared to operate with mediocrities, because it has to, and it has been rich and powerful enough to do so. It is the only country in my political lifetime where three able presidents (F.D.R., Kennedy, Nixon) have been replaced, at a moment's notice, by men neither qualified nor expected to do the job, without making any noticeable difference to the course of U.S. and world history. Historians who believe in the supremacy of high politics and great individuals have a hard case in America. That has created the foggy mechanisms of real government in Washington, made even more opaque by the sensational resources of corporate and pressure-group money, and the inability of the electoral process to distinguish between the real and the increasingly restricted political country. So, since the end of the U.S.S.R., the U.S.A. has quietly prepared to function as the world's only superpower. The problem is that its situation has no historical precedent, that its political system is geared to the ambitions and reactions of New Hampshire primaries and provincial protectionism, that it has no idea what to do with its power, and that almost certainly the world is too large and complicated to be dominated for any length of time by any single superpower, however great its military and economic resources. Megalomania is the occupational disease of global victors, unless controlled by fear. Nobody controls the U.S.A. today. That is why, as I write my autobiography, its enormous power can and obviously does destabilize the world.

"Senator John Edwards' Address On Rewarding Work And Creating Opportunity" (Georgetown University, 6/17/03; as transcribed at johnedwards.com):

Except for a brief respite in the '90s, for most of my adult life American politics has been stuck in the grip of two competing and unsatisfactory theories. The first, which I thought we'd disproved in the '80s, was the conservative notion that America should ask the least of those with the most. That idea was so far wrong, it took our country a decade to recover, and yet our leaders are making the same mistake again, this time with feeling. The second theory, which I thought we'd banished in the last decade, was the notion among some in my party that we could spend our way out of every problem. It didn't work, yet some in my party want to bring it back. . . .

The President and I agree on one thing: this campaign should be a debate about values. We need to have that debate, because the values of this president and this administration are not the values of mainstream America, the values all of us grew up with -- opportunity, responsibility, hard work.

There's a fundamental difference between his vision and mine. I believe America should value work. He only values wealth. He wants the people who own the most to get more. I want to make sure everybody has the chance to be an owner.

For a man who made responsibility the theme of his campaign, this president sure doesn't seem to value it much in office. We've lost 3.1 million private sector jobs. Over $3 trillion in stock market value lost. A $5.6 trillion budget surplus gone, and nearly $5 trillion of red ink in its place. Bill Clinton spent 8 years turning around 12 years of his predecessors' deficits. George Bush erased it in two years, and this year will break the all-time record.

Yet even with all those zeroes, the true cost of the administration's approach isn't what they've done with our money, it's what they want to do to our way of life. Their economic vision has one goal: to get rid of taxes on unearned income and shift the tax burden onto people who work. This crowd wants a world where the only people who have to pay taxes are the ones who do the work.

Make no mistake: this is the most radical and dangerous economic theory to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy and shrink the winners' circle.

This is a question of values, not taxes. We should cut taxes, but we shouldn't cut and run from our values when we do. John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan argued for tax cuts as an incentive for people to work harder: Americans work hard, and the government shouldn't punish them when they do.

This crowd is making a radically different argument. They don't believe work matters most. They don't believe in helping working people build wealth. They genuinely believe that the wealth of the wealthy matters most. They are determined to cut taxes on that wealth, year after year, and heap more and more of the burden on people who work.

How do we know this? Because they don't even try to hide it. The Bush budget proposed tax-free tax shelters for millionaires that are bigger than most Americans' paychecks for an entire year. And just last week, Bush's tax guru, Grover Norquist, said their goal is to abolish the capital gains tax, abolish the dividend tax, and let the wealthiest shelter as much as they want tax-free. . . .

In these times of national sacrifice, we should not be asking less of the most fortunate. I agree with Bill Gates, Sr., the father of the richest man in America, that in a world where taxes must be paid, the people who inherit massive estates ought to pay taxes too. I agree with Warren Buffett, the shrewd investor and another of America's richest men, who said that something is deeply wrong when a billionaire has a lower tax rate than his secretary. . . .

Mr. President, I challenge you. Explain why you think a multimillionaire should pay 15% on his next million, while a fireman has to pay over 30% for each extra dollar of overtime. Mr. President, explain how you square that with America's values.

"Facing Reality in Iraq" -- New York Times editorial, 7/8/03:

Assertions by Washington-based Pentagon officials that the current force is large enough don't square with reports from the field, which depict a steadily mounting conflict as well as sinking morale among some U.S. units exhausted after months of hard duty. Nor are the Pentagon's reports about the recruitment of allied forces encouraging: Though 70 nations have been contacted, only about 10 have made concrete commitments, and the number of non-U.S. troops is due to rise only from 12,000 to 20,000 by the end of summer. The poor support is a direct result of the administration's poor diplomacy, both before and after the war -- and, in particular, its insistence on monopolizing control over Iraq while mostly excluding the United Nations. India and Pakistan, for example, are reluctant to deploy troops under U.S. rather than U.N. command, and European countries have been slower to supply aid and advisers who could be assisting with reconstruction.

Harpers Weekly Review, 6/17/03

"Word that U.S. Doubted Iraq Would Use Gas" -- James Risen in The New York Times, 6/18/03:

WASHINGTON, June 17 -- American intelligence analysts reported to the Bush administration last year that Saddam Hussein's government had begun to deploy chemical weapons but that Baghdad would almost certainly not use them unless the government's survival was at stake, United States officials said today.

In a wide-ranging report in November, the Defense Intelligence Agency said it was unlikely that Iraq would use unconventional weapons as long as there were United Nations sanctions against the country. President Saddam Hussein would turn to the weapons only "in extreme circumstances," the D.I.A. report concluded, "because their use would confirm Iraq's evasion of U.N. restrictions," according to the report, portions of which were read to a reporter by an intelligence official.

The November D.I.A. report, which remains classified, indicates that most analysts believed at the time that Iraq had some illegal weapons, but that Mr. Hussein was not likely to use them or share them with terrorists.

The report also provides fuller context for statements made last fall by George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence, in a letter to Congress in which he said Iraq might use its weapons, but only if attacked. . . .

The D.I.A. report suggests that while, before the war, there was something close to a consensus in intelligence agencies that Iraq still had a program to develop illegal weapons, there was debate about whether Iraq intended to use them against the United States.

The report, titled "Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and missile programs," also stated that the United States had evidence of "munitions transfer activity in mid-2002," suggesting that "the regime is distributing chemical warfare munitions in preparation for an anticipated U.S. attack."

That tactical intelligence suggested that Mr. Hussein was planning to deploy chemical weapons to his most elite military units in case of an American invasion. As a result, the American military prepared ground forces for chemical attacks, requiring troops to frequently don chemical protective suits. Chemical weapons were never used during the war.

But short of an all-out invasion of Iraq, the D.I.A. analysts did not see many situations in which Mr. Hussein would turn to unconventional weapons, the report shows.

"Iraq's chemical agent use against Iran and the Kurds suggest that Baghdad possesses the political will to use any and all" illegal weapons, the report said, but only if "regime survival was imminently threatened."

"G.O.P. Dismisses Questions on Banned Arms Proof in Iraq" -- David E. Sanger and Carl Hulse in The New York Times, 6/18/03:

WASHINGTON, June 17 -- Despite growing questions about whether the White House exaggerated the evidence about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons, President Bush and his aides believe that the relief that Americans feel about Mr. Hussein's fall in Iraq will overwhelm any questions about the case the administration's built against him, administration officials and Republican strategists say.

For two days, Mr. Bush has characterized his critics as engaging in "revisionist history," and he has dwelled on the outcome of the war rather than the urgent nature of the threat that he described, almost daily, to build support for military action. As part of the drive to limit the political fallout, Republicans have moved quickly to resist Democrats' calls for a summer of public hearings, even as the intelligence committees of both houses begin reviewing intelligence material delivered under tight security by the Central Intelligence Agency. . . .

Still, Democrats are pressing the case, led by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is calling for open and closed hearings -- and a report by the end of the year, when the presidential primaries are in full gear.

"They have gone into an enormous defensive mode," Mr. Rockefeller said today, referring to efforts by the White House and Republican lawmakers to tamp down the issue of whether intelligence was manipulated. "They are trying to make it into a little molehill." . . .

A CBS News poll released three days ago shows that a growing number of Americans believe that the administration overestimated Iraq's capabilities. But it does not appear to make a difference: 62 percent said that the ouster of Mr. Hussein was, by itself, worth the cost in American lives.

"We may have gone to war because of weapons of mass destruction, but we have made our conclusions based on the reaction of the Iraqi people," said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster. "Are we relieved? Yes," Mr. Luntz said. "Do we feel good about ourselves? Absolutely."

Yet some Republicans remain worried -- in part because they fear that the rising tide of criticism in Britain against Prime Minister Tony Blair could leap the Atlantic. If the British investigation gains steam, they note, the echo in Washington could be significant. "After all," said one senior diplomat of a coalition country, "we were all working off the same shared evidence. If it was wrong for one, it was wrong for all."

"Blair Seeks Deal with Saddam's Men" -- Michael Evans in The London Times, 6/18/03:

BRITAIN is pressing America to offer top Iraqi prisoners possible freedom in exchange for information to speed up the search for Saddam Hussein and his missing weapons of mass destruction.

British officials are telling Washington that plea bargaining is the only way to track down the dictator and his arsenal, but to the Government's intense frustration the Bush Administration has so far rejected the appeals of its closest coalition ally.

Thirty-one of the fifty-five individuals on America's most-wanted "pack of cards" list have been arrested, but British officials told The Times that none of them had divulged any information during intensive interrogation.

The British Government wants to tell them that in exchange for crucial information their help will be taken into account if they appeared at a war crimes court. They might even be offered protection and a new life overseas if their information were decisive.

"We have been trying for ages to persuade the Americans but they have come up with all kinds of legal arguments," one government official said. US authorities have been happy to offer plea bargains to some of America's most notorious criminals, but apparently draw the line at members of a regime that they have denounced as evil. . . .

The prisoners include Tariq Aziz, the former Deputy Prime Minister, Zuhayr Talib abd al-Sattar al-Naqib, director of military intelligence, Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Sadi, a presidential advisor on scientific and technical affairs, and Rihab Taha, also known as Dr Germ.

A few top scientists have been flown out of Iraq, but most of the detainees are still being held at an undisclosed location in Baghdad. They have been questioned frequently by the CIA and other agencies, including MI6, but have revealed nothing.

British officials said that they all had similar stories about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, claiming there was no clandestine programme, and the coalition interrogators were getting nowhere.

"Open Iraq Hearings Crucial" -- Los Angeles Times editorial, 6/19/03:

President Bush dismisses questions as to whether his administration misrepresented intelligence about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, calling such accusations the product of "revisionist historians." But who's revising what with this daily name-calling campaign over recent history? The only way the administration can put to rest questions about its actions is to give up its resistance to a thorough congressional investigation of the intelligence concerning Iraq.

This is not just a matter for the record or for partisan jousting, although a congressional investigation would serve both purposes. It goes to the crux of the conduct of American foreign policy, this country's global credibility and the constitutional duties of the commander in chief. Polls indicate that most Americans are indifferent as to whether Iraq really had weapons of mass destruction. But the British are outraged over the testimony Tuesday of two former Cabinet ministers in a parliamentary hearing on Iraq that they believe Prime Minister Tony Blair twisted intelligence to exaggerate the danger posed by Saddam Hussein.

In Washington, the Senate and House are conducting closed intelligence hearings this week. But Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, balks at open hearings. Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, correctly seeks open hearings and a public report.

Committee member Carl Levin (D-Mich.) wants to publicly question CIA Director George J. Tenet. Levin contends Tenet misled Americans and believes the U.S. did not fully disclose to United Nations weapons inspectors full intelligence on possible Iraqi weapon sites; to have done so might have prolonged the push for inspections and disrupted the administration's rush to war, Levin says. These and other such serious accusations -- including whether the administration pressured analysts to come up with worst-case analyses of Iraqi weaponry -- can best be answered in public hearings.

Bush officials may hope they can ward off such sessions, stalling in the hope that U.S. forces do find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Especially as the parties head into the 2004 presidential campaign, Democrats will be eager to hammer at this topic and anything else they can find to embarrass Bush. But something more than partisanship is at stake here now: Britain is conducting a real investigation into the intelligence it had about Baghdad, and the U.S. can too. If America must mobilize the world in the days to come about grave concerns such as the nuclear intentions of North Korea or Iran, it will need intelligence that isn't under a cloud of doubt about what may, or may not, have happened with Iraq.

"Getting Ready to Bow Out, Hans Blix Speaks His Mind on How U.S. Doubted Him" -- Felicity Barringer in The New York Times, 6/19/03:

UNITED NATIONS, June 18 -- Hans Blix, the retiring chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, has questioned in an interview why American and British forces expected to find large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq when it was clear that his inspectors had failed to report any such discovery.

In an interview on Tuesday in his 31st-floor offices at the United Nations, he said:

"What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons. I don't see how they could have come to such an attitude if they had, at any time, studied the reports" of present and former United Nations inspectors.

"Is the United Nations on a different planet?" he added. "Are reports from here totally unread south of the Hudson?" . . .

Asked about the war's outcome, Mr. Blix said, "We all welcome the disappearance of one of the world's most horrible regimes."

He added: "The good impact is the freeing of the Iraqi people. The bad impact is people have died, and the destruction that was brought there. The good impact may be upon the peace negotiations" in the Middle East. "I don't know. It's too early to know."

He continued: "The negative impact is the anti-Americanism that is abroad in the Middle East. And the bad impact would be if it drags out and you have more people become guerrillas in Iraq. The bad impact, I think, is on the U.N. Security Council -- the U.S. further going away from the Security Council, saying this is a hopeless institution."

"Ex-CIA Director Says Administration Stretched Facts on Iraq" -- John Diamond in USA Today, 6/17/03:

Former CIA director Stansfield Turner accused the Bush administration Tuesday of "overstretching the facts" about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in making its case for invading that country.

Turner's broadside adds the retired admiral's name to a list of former intelligence professionals concerned that the CIA and its intelligence reports were manipulated to justify the war. Since Baghdad fell April 9, U.S. forces have been unable to find chemical and biological weapons the White House said were in Iraq.

Turner, who headed the CIA under President Carter, paused for a long moment when asked by reporters whether current CIA Director George Tenet should resign. "That's a tough one," Turner said. The problem did not appear to lie with the CIA, he said, but Tenet should consider resigning if he lost the confidence of President Bush or the American people. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

Turner suggested Tenet should tread cautiously because CIA directors "can be made the fall guy" by administrations when policy judgments based on intelligence go wrong.

Turner said, "There is no question in my mind (policymakers) distorted the situation, either because they had bad intelligence or because they misinterpreted it."

Public criticism of an administration's handling of intelligence is rare from former CIA directors, who typically give the benefit of the doubt to those with full access to classified information. . . .

Turner's comments come a month after a group of retired U.S. intelligence officers wrote President Bush to "express deep concern" over alleged misuse of intelligence to justify the war.

Text of

House Resolution 260 (thomas.loc.gov):

Resolved, That the President is requested to transmit to the House of Representatives not later than 14 days after the date of the adoption of this resolution documents or other materials in the President's possession that provides specific evidence for the following claims relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction:

(1) On August 26, 2002, the Vice President in a speech stated: 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction . . . What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons.'.

(2) On September 12, 2002, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the President stated: 'Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons . . . Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.'.

(3) On October 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, the President stated: 'It [Iraq] possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons . . . And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.'.

(4) On January 7, 2003, the Secretary of Defense at a press briefing stated: 'There is no doubt in my mind but that they currently have chemical and biological weapons.'.

(5) On January 9, 2003, in his daily press briefing, the White House spokesperson stated: 'We know for a fact that there are weapons there [in Iraq].'.

(6) On March 16, 2003, in an appearance on NBC's 'Meet The Press', the Vice President stated: 'We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong.'.

(7) On March 17, 2003, in an Address to the Nation, the President stated: 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.'.

(8) On March 21, 2003, in his daily press briefing the White House spokesperson stated: 'Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.'.

(9) On March 24, 2003, in an appearance on CBS's 'Face the Nation', the Secretary of Defense stated: 'We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established.'.

(10) On March 30, 2003, in an appearance on ABC's 'This Week', the Secretary of Defense stated: 'We know where they [weapons of mass destruction] are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.'.

"The Dog Ate My WMDs" -- William Rivers Pitt at alternet.org, 6/16/03:

After roughly 280 days worth of fearful descriptions of the formidable Iraqi arsenal, coming on the heels of seven years of UNSCOM weapons inspections, four years of surveillance, months of UNMOVIC weapons inspections, the investiture of an entire nation by American and British forces, after which said forces searched "everywhere" per the words of the Marine commander over there and "found nothing," after interrogating dozens of the scientists and officers who have nothing to hide anymore because Hussein is gone, after finding out that the dreaded 'mobile labs' were weather balloon platforms sold to Iraq by the British, George W. Bush and his people suddenly have a few things to answer for. . . .

George W. Bush and his people used the fear and terror that still roils within the American people in the aftermath of September 11 to fob off an unnerving fiction about a faraway nation, and then used that fiction to justify a war that killed thousands and thousands of people.

Latter-day justifications about 'liberating' the Iraqi people or demonstrating the strength of America to the world do not obscure this fact. They lied us into a war that, beyond the death toll, served as the greatest Al Qaeda recruiting drive in the history of the world. They lied about a war that cost billions of dollars which could have been better used to bolster America's amazingly substandard anti-terror defenses. They are attempting, in the aftermath, to misuse the CIA by blaming them for all of it.

Blaming the CIA will not solve this problem, for the CIA is well able to defend itself. Quashing investigations in the House will not stem the questions that come now at a fast and furious clip.

"CIA Deliberately Misled UN Arms Inspectors, Says Senator" -- Rupert Cornwell in The Independent, 6/18/03:

The row over Iraq's missing weapons intensified in Washington yesterday as a leading Senate Democrat accused the CIA of deliberately misleading United Nations inspectors to help clear the decks for an invasion of Iraq.

The charge by Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, comes as Congress gears up for its own hearings into whether the Bush administration misinterpreted or manipulated pre-war intelligence on the scale of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Mr Levin is not the first Democrat to question the CIA's role. But his allegations are the most precise yet, and seem bound to increase pressure for a fuller, more public investigation than the Republican majority on Capitol Hill has been willing to concede thus far.

Mr Levin says that when the UN team under Hans Blix returned to Iraq last autumn, the CIA - contrary to what it claimed at the time - did not pass on its full list of 150 high or medium priority suspected weapons sites. This, in turn, enabled the US government to shut down the inspections quickly, opening the path for military action.

"Why did the CIA say that they had provided detailed information to the UN inspectors on all of the high and medium suspect sites, when they had not?" Mr Levin asked. "Did the CIA act in this way in order not to undermine administration policy?"

Had it been known that there were still outstanding sites, he suggested, there would have been "greater public demand that the inspection process continue".

"Dean: Investigate Bush Statements on Iraq" -- Mike Glover in Newsday, 6/18/03:

ATLANTIC, Iowa -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on Tuesday called for an independent investigation of President Bush and his justification for the U.S.-led war against Iraq, arguing that the commander in chief misled the country.

"I think the president owes this country an explanation because what the president said was not entirely truthful, and he needs to explain why that was," Dean said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Dean cited a number of statements made by Bush and other senior administration officials about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the dangers that the regime posed to the United States. The candidate said the claims were made even though officials knew they weren't true.

"We need a thorough look at what really happened going into Iraq," Dean said. "It appears to me that what the president did was make a decision to go into Iraq sometime in early 2002, or maybe even late 2001, and then try to get the justification afterward." . . .

Dean, an outspoken opponent of the war, said an independent probe is warranted because the Republican-controlled Congress is unwilling to challenge a popular GOP president.

"No one is going to trust a right-wing Congress to do this," said the former Vermont governor.

Dean's rival, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, also said Tuesday that the inability of coalition forces to find weapons of mass destruction at this point calls into question the credibility of the administration.

"Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find Them" -- Kenneth Pollack in The New York Times, 6/20/03:

At the heart of the mystery lies the fact that the Iraqis do not seem to have deployed any stocks of munitions filled with nonconventional weapons. Why did Saddam Hussein not hit coalition troops with a barrage of chemical and biological weapons rather than allow his regime to fall? Why did we not find them in ammunition dumps, ready to be fired?

Actually, there are many possible explanations. Saddam Hussein may have underestimated the likelihood of war and not filled any chemical weapons before the invasion. He may have been killed or gravely wounded in the "decapitation" strike on the eve of the invasion and unable to give the orders. Or he may have just been surprised by the extremely rapid pace of the coalition's ground advance and the sudden collapse of the Republican Guard divisions surrounding Baghdad. It is also possible that Iraq did not have the capacity to make the weapons, but given the prewar evidence, this is still the least likely explanation.

The one potentially important discovery made so far by American troops -- two tractor-trailers found in April and May that fit the descriptions of mobile germ-warfare labs given by Iraqi defectors over the years -- might well point to a likely explanation for at least part of the mystery: Iraq may have decided to keep only a chemical and biological warfare production capability rather than large stockpiles of the munitions themselves. This would square with the fact that several dozen chemical warfare factories were rebuilt after the first gulf war to produce civilian pharmaceuticals, but were widely believed to be dual-use plants capable of quickly being converted back to chemical warfare production.

In truth, this was always the most likely scenario. Chemical and biological warfare munitions, especially the crude varieties that Iraq developed during the Iran-Iraq War, are dangerous to store and handle and they deteriorate quickly. But they can be manufactured and put in warheads relatively rapidly -- meaning that there is little reason to have thousands of filled rounds sitting around where they might be found by international inspectors. It would have been logical for Iraq to retain only some means of production, which could be hidden with relative ease and then used to churn out the munitions whenever Saddam Hussein gave the word.

Still, no matter what the trailers turn out to be, the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in no way invalidates the prewar intelligence data indicating that Iraq had the clandestine capacity to build them. There has long been an extremely strong case -- based on evidence that largely predates the Bush administration -- that Iraq maintained programs in weapons of mass destruction. It was this evidence, along with reports showing the clear failure of United Nations efforts to impede Iraq's progress, that led the Clinton administration to declare a policy of "regime change" for Iraq in 1998. . . .

At no point before the war did the French, the Russians, the Chinese or any other country with an intelligence operation capable of collecting information in Iraq say it doubted that Baghdad was maintaining a clandestine weapons capability. All that these countries ever disagreed with the United States on was what to do about it.

Which raises the real crux of the slanted-intelligence debate: the timing of the war. Why was it necessary to put aside all of our other foreign policy priorities to go to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003? It was always the hardest part of the Bush administration's argument to square with the evidence. And, distressingly, there seems to be more than a little truth to claims that some members of the administration skewed, exaggerated and even distorted raw intelligence to coax the American people and reluctant allies into going to war against Iraq this year.

Before the war, some administration officials clearly tended to emphasize in public only the most dire aspects of the intelligence agencies' predictions. For example, of greatest importance were the estimates of how close Iraq was to obtaining a nuclear weapon. The major Western intelligence services essentially agreed that Iraq could acquire one or more nuclear bombs within about four to six years. However, all also indicated that it was possible Baghdad might be able to do so in as few as one or two years if, and only if, it were able to acquire fissile material on the black market.

This latter prospect was not very likely. The Iraqis had been trying to buy fissile material since the 1970's and had never been able to do so. Nevertheless, some Bush administration officials chose to stress the one-to-two-year possibility rather than the more likely four-to-six year scenario. Needless to say, if the public felt Iraq was still several years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon rather than just a matter of months, there probably would have been much less support for war this spring.

Moreover, before the war I heard many complaints from friends still in government that some Bush officials were mounting a ruthless campaign over intelligence estimates. I was told that when government analysts wrote cautious assessments of Iraq's capabilities, they were grilled and forced to go to unusual lengths to defend their judgments, and some were chastized for failing to come to more alarming conclusions. None of this is illegal, but it was perceived as an attempt to browbeat analysts into either changing their estimates or shutting up and ceding the field to their more hawkish colleagues.

More damning than the claims of my former colleagues has been some of the investigative reporting done since the war. Particularly troubling are reports that the administration knew its contention that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger was based on forged documents. If true, it would be a serious indictment of the administration's handling of the war.

As important as this debate is, what may ultimately turn out to be the biggest concern over the Iraqi weapons program is the question of whose hands it is now in. If we do confirm that those two trailers are mobile biological warfare labs, we are faced with a tremendous problem. If the defectors' reports about the rates at which such mobile labs were supposedly constructed are correct, there are probably 22 more trailers still out there. Where are they? Syria? Iran? Jordan? Still somewhere in Iraq? Or have they found their way into the hands of those most covetous -- Osama bin Laden and his confederates?

"Evidence against Iraq Was Always Fanciful" -- Josh Marshall in The Hill, 6/18/03:

If you were (a) paying attention to this debate, and (b) not an utterly rabid ideologue, you knew the administration was tossing around all sorts of improbable, unproven or just plain ridiculous stories. All that's changed is that something else truly unexpected happened: We didn't find anything -- no chemicals, no biologicals, no nothing -- at least not yet. And that fact suddenly made it possible to discuss, or maybe just impossible to ignore, what most of us knew all along.

Let's review how we got here.

There were really two WMD debates. One was about chemical and low-end biological weapons. The other was about smallpox, nukes, al Qaeda and pretty much everything else under the sun.

On the former, the White House didn't hoodwink anyone, since virtually everyone in the foreign policy mainstream figured that Iraq at least maintained a chemical and biological weapons capacity. I certainly thought so.

At a minimum, there was solid circumstantial evidence to believe that they did. Frankly, there still is.

The Iraqis stubbornly resisted and stymied the U.N. inspectors until the old inspections regime collapsed in 1998 -- and at a very high cost. Back then the inspectors still believed that vast stocks of chemical and biological agents remained unaccounted for. It made no sense to believe that with the inspectors gone the Iraqis would not only shutter their weapons program but ditch the goods they'd expended so much effort to conceal.

Debate No. 2 was an entirely different story. Here, the administration was clearly in kitchen-sink territory. The Iraqis were close to getting a nuke. (Remember Condi's line -- "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" -- and Dick Cheney's wild-eyed predictions.) They were tight with al Qaeda. They were developing horrible and unimaginable new bacteriological agents. They might be doing this; they might be doing that. Might, might, might!

It's not so much that the administration was lying -- as in saying things it knew to be false -- as it was happy to pass along or credit almost anything anybody said no matter how speculative the theory or how flimsy the evidence: uncorroborated tales from defectors, crackpot theories from think-tank denizens, worst-case-scenario speculations, anything.

We had good reason to suspect Saddam's continuing nuclear ambitions, and that made it extremely important to get inspectors back in the country. Unlike chemical and biological weapons, a serious nuclear program is hard to conceal. But long before the current brouhaha broke out over the bogus Niger-uranium sale documents, little of the administration's actual evidence on the nuclear front stood up to real scrutiny.

Meanwhile, the evidence for an al Qaeda link ranged from the extremely speculative to the extremely ridiculous.

To get a feel for the quality of the administration's evidence for an al Qaeda link, just remember how often administration officials jabbered on about Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan.

That sounded like the smoking gun until you considered that that was the part of Iraq that Saddam hadn't controlled for years because of our no-fly zones.

True, there were some speculative and very self-interested allegations that Saddam might be aiding Ansar to knock the dominant pro-U.S. Kurdish parties off balance. But based simply on Ansar's location, Saddam might as credibly have accused us of harboring Ansar against him as the other way around.

That and lots of other stuff just didn't pass the laugh test. But pretty much everyone in the press and the political class gave them a pass.

The deal was that all of the more ridiculous and far-fetched statements would be forgiven and forgotten so long as we found a good stash of chemicals and biologicals. It was only after even that stuff didn't turn up that folks gave a long second thought to what top administration officials had been peddling.

So let's not kid ourselves by pretending there's some new debate about whether the White House hyped and misled the public about the scope of Iraqi WMD or an al Qaeda link. We knew that.

"Untethered to Reality" -- Michael Kinsley in The Washington Post, 6/20/03:

As for settling the argument about WMD as a justification for the war, that argument is already settled. It's obvious that the Bush administration had no good evidence to back up its dire warnings. And even if months of desperate searching ultimately turns up a thing or two, this will hardly vindicate the administration's claim to have known it all along. The administration itself in effect now agrees that actually finding the weapons doesn't matter. It asserts that the war can be justified on humanitarian grounds alone and that Hussein may have destroyed those weapons on his way out the door. (Exactly what we wanted him to do, by the way, now repositioned as a dirty trick.) These are not the sorts of things you say if you know those weapons exist. And if it doesn't matter that they don't seem to exist, it cannot logically matter if they do.

Harpers Weekly Review, 6/24/03

Harpers Weekly Review, 6/3/03

"Bush's Deceptions on Iraq Intelligence" -- Derrick Z. Jackson in The Boston Globe, 6/6/03:

Despite 160,000 American and British troops and the world's greatest technology, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. The commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant General James Conway, said whatever intelligence he was given on WMD, ''We were simply wrong.'' Conway said, ''We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there.''

Many current and former intelligence officers are now saying that the White House either ignored intelligence reports that failed to confirm weapons of mass destruction or trumped up skimpy or lame reports. A claim by Bush that Saddam was buying uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons turned out to be a forged document on the letterhead of a minister of foreign affairs in Niger who had been out of office for a decade.

Greg Thielmann, a recently retired State Department analyst who could not believe that Bush would use ''that stupid piece of garbage'' to make his case, told Newsweek, ''There is a lot of sorrow and anger at the way intelligence was misused.''

A Central Command planner told Newsweek that the CIA's information on the sites where weapons of mass destruction were stored was ''crap.'' An intelligence official told US News and World Report that ''the policy decisions weren't matching the reports we were reading every day.'' In a 2002 document, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded, ''There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons.''

Time quoted a senior military official who helped plan the war in Iraq but quit after seeing the White House exaggerate bad intelligence. Time also quoted an Army intelligence officer who said Rumsfeld ''was deeply, almost pathologically distorting the intelligence.''

US News and World Report detailed how Cheney's staff fed Secretary of State Colin Powell reams of ''evidence'' that could not be confirmed on the eve of Powell's testimony to the United Nations. David Albright, a former Atomic Energy Agency arms inspector, said the White House ''deliberately selected information that would increase the perception that Iraq was a serious threat'' and ''made a decision to turn a blind eye'' to the evidence that ''the large number of deployed chemical weapons the administration said that Iraq had are not there.''

Patrick Lang, a former CIA analyst on Iraq, has said intelligence was ''exploited and abused and bypassed'' by the White House. Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of CIA counter-terrorism operations, said many intelligence officials ''believe it is a scandal.'' Cannistraro said Bush had a ''moral obligation to use the best information available, not just information that fits your preconceived ideas.''

"Is Lying about the Reason for War an Impeachable Offense?" -- John Dean at cnn.com, 6/6/03:

In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

"Secretary of State Forced to Defend Credibility of Intelligence Reports" -- Gary Younge in The Guardian, 6/5/03:

Earlier this week it emerged that Mr Powell had been so disturbed about questionable intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that he assembled a secret team to review the information he was given before he made a crucial speech to the UN security council on February 5.

The team removed dozens of pages of alleged evidence about Iraq's banned weapons and ties to terrorists from a draft of his speech because they could not be verified, according to the magazine US News and World Report.

At one point he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing of the intelligence claims that he declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."

According to the magazine Greg Theilmann, a recently retired state department intelligence analyst directly involved in assessing the Iraqi threat, says that inside the administration "there was a lot of sorrow and anger at the way intelligence was misused".

"Blair's Spin Doctor Apologizes for Dossier" -- Colin Brown and Francis Elliott in The Age, 6/9/03:

Tony Blair's closest adviser has written a personal letter apologising to the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service for discrediting the service with the release last January of the so-called "dodgy dossier" on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

The disclosure that Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's director of strategy and communications, apologised to the head of MI6 for the dossier, Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation, will fuel claims that Downing Street was involved in "doctoring" intelligence reports before the war.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported that Mr Campbell put his apology in writing to end a row with the intelligence service over the dossier, after it was revealed that parts were lifted via the internet from a 12-year-old thesis by an American student.

"Retired State Analyst Alleges Distortion, Misstated Conjecture in Leadup to Iraq" -- John J. Lumpkin in The Boston Globe, 6/7/03:

WASHINGTON (AP) The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war.

"What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say," said Greg Thielmann, who retired last September. "The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field."

Thielmann was director of the strategic, proliferation and military issues office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His office was privy to classified intelligence gathered by the CIA and other agencies about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear programs.

In Thielmann's view, Iraq could have presented an immediate threat to U.S. security in two areas: Either it was about to make a nuclear weapon, or it was forming close operational ties with al-Qaida terrorists.

Evidence was lacking for both, despite claims by President Bush and others, Thielmann said in an interview this week. Suspicions were presented as fact, contrary arguments ignored, he said. . . .

Thielmann suggested mistakes may have been made at points all along the chain from when intelligence is gathered, analyzed, presented to the president and then provided to the public.

The evidence of a renewed nuclear program in Iraq was far more limited than the administration contended, he said.

"When the administration did talk about specific evidence it was basically declassified, sensitive information it did it in a way that was also not entirely honest," Thielmann said. . . .

Thielmann said he had presumed Iraq had supplies of chemical and probably biological weapons. He particularly expected U.S. forces to find caches of mustard agent or other chemical weapons left over from Saddam's old stockpiles.

"We appear to have been wrong," he said. "I've been genuinely surprised at that."

"Bush's Scorched-Earth Campaign" -- Neal Gabler in The New York Times, 6/8/03:

From the moment of his disputed election in 2000, President Bush has been dramatically reversing the traditional relationship between politics and policy. In his administration, politics seem less a means to policy than policy is a means to politics. Its goal is not to further the conservative revolution as advertised. The presidency's real goal is to disable the Democratic opposition, once and for all.

This has become a presidential mission partly by default. Bush came to the presidency with no commanding ideology, no grand crusade. He was in league with conservatives, but he was no fire-breather. For him, conservatism seemed a convenience -- the only path to the Republican nomination. One is hard-pressed to think of a single position Bush took during the 2000 campaign, save for his tax cuts, much less a full program. . . .

It has been said of Bush that he intends to finish the Reagan revolution by embedding conservatism so deeply into the governmental fabric that it will take generations to undo it. What he is really finishing, though, is not the Reagan revolution but the Clinton wars, which had far less to do with ideology than with politics. As Rove has engineered it, this is about power, pure and simple. It is about guaranteeing electoral results.

That is why, one suspects, Bush elicits such deep antagonism from the left -- deeper perhaps than any political figure since Nixon, even though he is personally genial and charming. At some level, maybe only subliminally, liberals know what the president and Rove are up to and fear that they will succeed in dismantling an effective two-party system. The left knows that Rove and company aren't keen on debating issues, negotiating, compromising and horse-trading, the usual means of getting things done politically. On the contrary: The administration is intent on foreclosing them.

As much as liberals abhor the conservative agenda, there is something far more frightening to them now -- not that Republicans have an ideological grand plan but that they don't have one. Instead, the GOP plan is policy solely in the service of politics, which should terrify democrats everywhere.

Harpers Weekly Review, 6/10/03

"Republicans Limit Probe of Iraq Intelligence" -- Vicki Allen in The Washington Post, 6/11/03:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in Congress on Wednesday rebuffed calls by Democrats for a full-blown investigation into whether the Bush administration misread or inflated the threats posed by Iraq before going to war.

But they agreed to hold oversight hearings and review documents on U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. . . .

Democrats on the two Senate committees that oversee intelligence operations called for a formal joint investigation of the administration's case on Iraq's weapons and alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

"We've got to make sure that the CIA does not embellish or distort in any way the intelligence information in order to advance a policy of any administration," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, called the Republicans' plan for oversight hearings "entirely inadequate and slow-paced."

"I'm not sure whether they really want to get to the crux of what really happened," he said, adding that he would keep pressing for a broad inquiry.

"Explain Why You Cited Forged Evidence" -- Rep. Henry Waxman's letter to George W. Bush, reprinted in Executive Intelligence Report, 6/13/03.

"U.S. Has Gained Little if Bush Lied about Reason for War" -- Mark Bowden in The Philadelphia Enquirer, 5/25/03:

Hussein represented only one of many thuggish regimes, and that the United States is not about to go to war against them all. I supported this war because I believed Bush and Blair when they said Iraq was manufacturing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons in the hands of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that shared Hussein's hostile designs made such a threat a defense priority - or so the argument went.

Early this month, the U.S. military announced that it had found three mobile laboratories that were most likely designed to manufacture chemical or biological weapons, the types of labs that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to in making his argument for war before the U.N. Security Council. The discoveries were suggestive but hardly convincing evidence of the specific, tangible threat repeatedly outlined by the President. With the authors of Iraq's illicit-weapons program now in custody, we should expect to see soon, or to have seen already, the facilities and stockpiles we and most of the rest of the world believed Hussein possessed.

They may yet be found, but it is beginning to look as though the skeptics in this case were right. If so, I was taken in by this administration, and America and Great Britain were led to war under false pretenses.

Events have moved so swiftly, and Hussein's toppling has posed so many new pressing problems, that it would be easy to lose sight of this issue, but it is critically important. I can imagine no greater breach of public trust than to mislead a country into war. A strong case might have been made to go after Hussein just because he posed a potential threat to us and the region, because of his support for suicide bombers, and because of his ruthless oppression of his own people. But this is not the case our President chose to make. . . .

I trusted Bush, and unless something big develops on the weapons front in Iraq soon, it appears as though I was fooled by him. Perhaps he himself was taken in by his intelligence and military advisers. If so, he ought to be angry as hell, because ultimately he bears the responsibility.

"Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use" -- Judith Miller and William J. Broad in The New York Times, 6/7/03:

American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment. . . .

In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said. . . .

The skeptical experts said the mobile plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production, peaceful or otherwise. Its lack of availability between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.

Second, if this shortcoming were somehow circumvented, each unit would still produce only a relatively small amount of germ-laden liquid, which would have to undergo further processing at some other factory unit to make it concentrated and prepare it for use as a weapon.

Finally, they said, the trailers have no easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank.

Senior intelligence officials in Washington rebutted the skeptics, saying, for instance, that the Iraqis might have obtained the needed steam for sterilization from a separate supply truck.

The skeptics noted further that the mobile plants had a means of easily extracting gas. Iraqi scientists have said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. While the white paper dismisses that as a cover story, some analysts see the Iraqi explanation as potentially credible. . . .

William C. Patrick III, a senior official in the germ warfare program that Washington renounced in 1969, said the lack of steam sterilization had caused him to question the germ-plant theory that he had once tentatively endorsed. "That's a huge minus," he said. "I don't see how you can clean those tanks chemically." . . .

Some doubters noted that the intelligence community was still scrambling to analyze the trailers, suggesting that the white paper may have been premature. They said laboratories in the Middle East and the United States were now analyzing more than 100 samples from the trailers to verify the intelligence findings. Allied forces, they noted, have so far failed to find any of the envisioned support vehicles that the trailers would need to produce biological weapons.

One skeptic questioned the practicality of some of the conjectural steps the Iraqis are envisioned as having taken to adapt the trailers to the job of making deadly germs.

"It's not built and designed as a standard fermenter," he said of the central tank. "Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that's true of any tin can."

"Blix: I Was Smeared by the Pentagon" -- Helena Smith in The Guardian, 6/11/03:

Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, lashed out last night at the "bastards" who have tried to undermine him throughout the three years he has held his high-profile post.

In an extraordinary departure from the diplomatic language with which he has come to be associated, Mr Blix assailed his critics in both Washington and Iraq.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian from his 31st floor office at the UN in New York, Mr Blix said: "I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media. Not that I cared very much.

"It was like a mosquito bite in the evening that is there in the morning, an irritant."

In a wide-ranging interview Mr Blix, who retires in three weeks' time, accused:

-- The Bush administration of leaning on his inspectors to produce more damning language in their reports;

-- "Some elements" of the Pentagon of being behind a smear campaign against him; and

-- Washington of regarding the UN as an "alien power" which they hoped would sink into the East river.

Asked if he believed he had been the target of a deliberate smear campaign he said: "Yes, I probably was at a lower level."

Billmon's

collection of quotations from the Bush Administration and allies insisting on the imminent danger of Iraq's banned weapons.

"White House in Denial" -- Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times, 6/13/03:

[L]et me offer some more detail about the uranium saga. Piecing the story together from two people directly involved and three others who were briefed on it, the tale begins at the end of 2001, when third-rate forged documents turned up in West Africa purporting to show the sale by Niger to Iraq of tons of "yellowcake" uranium.

Italy's intelligence service obtained the documents and shared them with British spooks, who passed them on to Washington. Mr. Cheney's office got wind of this and asked the C.I.A. to investigate.

The agency chose a former ambassador to Africa to undertake the mission, and that person flew to Niamey, Niger, in the last week of February 2002. This envoy spent one week in Niger, staying at the Sofitel and discussing his findings with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, and then flew back to Washington via Paris.

Immediately upon his return, in early March 2002, this senior envoy briefed the C.I.A. and State Department and reported that the documents were bogus, for two main reasons. First, the documents seemed phony on their face -- for example, the Niger minister of energy and mines who had signed them had left that position years earlier. Second, an examination of Niger's uranium industry showed that an international consortium controls the yellowcake closely, so the Niger government does not have any yellowcake to sell.

Officials now claim that the C.I.A. inexplicably did not report back to the White House with this envoy's findings and reasoning, or with an assessment of its own that the information was false. I hear something different. My understanding is that while Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet may not have told Mr. Bush that the Niger documents were forged, lower C.I.A. officials did tell both the vice president's office and National Security Council staff members. Moreover, I hear from another source that the C.I.A.'s operations side and its counterterrorism center undertook their own investigations of the documents, poking around in Italy and Africa, and also concluded that they were false -- a judgment that filtered to the top of the C.I.A.

Meanwhile, the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, independently came to the exact same conclusion about those documents, according to Greg Thielmann, a former official there. Mr. Thielmann said he was "quite confident" that the conclusion had been passed up to the top of the State Department.

"It was well known throughout the intelligence community that it was a forgery," said Melvin Goodman, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now at the Center for International Policy.

Still, Mr. Tenet and the intelligence agencies were under intense pressure to come up with evidence against Iraq. Ambiguities were lost, and doubters were discouraged from speaking up.

"It was a foregone conclusion that every photo of a trailer truck would be a `mobile bioweapons lab' and every tanker truck would be `filled with weaponized anthrax,' " a former military intelligence officer said. "None of the analysts in military uniform had the option to debate the vice president, secretary of defense and the secretary of state."

Rep. Henry Waxman's

Nuclear Evidence on Iraq page

Bill Moyers's

"Presidential Address" to the Take Back America conference in Washington, DC, 6/4/03: "This is Your Story: The Progressive Story of America. Pass It On . . . "

"Iraqi Mobile Labs Nothing to Do with Germ Warfare, Report Finds" -- Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff in The Observer, 6/15/03:

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.

The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'

The conclusion of the investigation ordered by the British Government - and revealed by The Observer last week - is hugely embarrassing for Blair, who had used the discovery of the alleged mobile labs as part of his efforts to silence criticism over the failure of Britain and the US to find any weapons of mass destruction since the invasion of Iraq. . . .

The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control.

"War Poll Uncovers Fact Gap" -- Frank Davies in The Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/14/03:

WASHINGTON - A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.

But such weapons have not been found in Iraq and were not used.

Before the war, half of those polled in a survey said Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001. But most of the Sept. 11 terrorists were Saudis; none was an Iraqi.

The results startled even the pollsters who conducted and analyzed the surveys. How could so many people be so wrong about information that has dominated news coverage for almost two years?

"It's a striking finding," said Steve Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which asked the weapons questions during a May 14-18 poll of 1,256 respondents.

He added: "Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention, this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."

That is, of having their beliefs conflict with the facts. Kull noted that the mistaken belief that weapons had been found "is substantially greater among those who favored the war." . . .

Before the war, the U.S. media often reported as a fact the assertions by the Bush administration that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of illegal weapons.

During and after the war, reports of possible weapons discoveries were often trumpeted on front pages, while follow-up stories debunking the reports received less attention.

"Iraqi Military and Security Services Disbanded" -- The Guardian, 5/23/03:

Iraq's armed forces and the security organisations that supported Saddam Hussein's regime have been dissolved, it was announced today.

L Paul Bremer, the top official in the interim administration that is running the country, said the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, the Republican Guard and "other specified security institutions which constituted and supported the most repressive activities of Saddam Hussein's regime", have been disbanded. . . .

Today's order also ends conscription, turns the property of the dissolved entities over to the new administration and dismissed all employees of the armed forces, Republican Guard and the defence ministry.

It also abolishes the information ministry, which tightly controlled Iraq's media and the work of foreign journalists.

The announcement follows the administration's decree on May 16 abolishing Saddam's Ba'ath party and ordering the dismissal of party officials from the civil service. . . .

The move follows demonstrations in Baghdad on Sunday when former noncommissioned officers and officers from the three services, demanded back pay and other benefits owed to them since the collapse of Saddam's regime on April 9.

"Dividend Voodoo" -- Warren Buffett in The Washington Post, 5/20/03:

The taxes I pay to the federal government, including the payroll tax that is paid for me by my employer, Berkshire Hathaway, are roughly the same proportion of my income -- about 30 percent -- as that paid by the receptionist in our office. My case is not atypical -- my earnings, like those of many rich people, are a mix of capital gains and ordinary income -- nor is it affected by tax shelters (I've never used any). As it works out, I pay a somewhat higher rate for my combination of salary, investment and capital gain income than our receptionist does. But she pays a far higher portion of her income in payroll taxes than I do. . . .

Now the Senate says that dividends should be tax-free to recipients. Suppose this measure goes through and the directors of Berkshire Hathaway (which does not now pay a dividend) therefore decide to pay $1 billion in dividends next year. Owning 31 percent of Berkshire, I would receive $310 million in additional income, owe not another dime in federal tax, and see my tax rate plunge to 3 percent.

And our receptionist? She'd still be paying about 30 percent, which means she would be contributing about 10 times the proportion of her income that I would to such government pursuits as fighting terrorism, waging wars and supporting the elderly. Let me repeat the point: Her overall federal tax rate would be 10 times what my rate would be. . . .

Administration officials say that the $310 million suddenly added to my wallet would stimulate the economy because I would invest it and thereby create jobs. But they conveniently forget that if Berkshire kept the money, it would invest that same amount, creating jobs as well. . . .

Proponents of cutting tax rates on dividends argue that the move will stimulate the economy. A large amount of stimulus, of course, should already be on the way from the huge and growing deficit the government is now running. I have no strong views on whether more action on this front is warranted. But if it is, don't cut the taxes of people with huge portfolios of stocks held directly. (Small investors owning stock held through 401(k)s are already tax-favored.) Instead, give reductions to those who both need and will spend the money gained. Enact a Social Security tax "holiday" or give a flat-sum rebate to people with low incomes. Putting $1,000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets.

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a "break" requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

"All Together Now" -- Guardian lead editorial, 5/23/03:

In pressing significant amendments to the new UN security council resolution on Iraq, France and Russia did Britain a favour. The original draft, principally authored by the US, failed to give a central role to the UN and was objectionable in several other respects, not least in its silence on resumed UN weapons inspections. The resolution passed yesterday corrects some of these imbalances.

It is now agreed that the UN's special representative will have an influential, though not decisive, say in Iraq's political rehabilitation; that the occupying powers (the US and Britain) must report regularly to the council; that there will be strengthened international monitoring of the management of Iraq's oil revenues; and that the UN oil-for-food programme - vital while Iraq's humanitarian situation remains so precarious - will continue for at least six months. The resolution is still unsatisfactorily vague about future, "confirmatory" UN inspections, promising only to "revisit" the issue. It sets no timetable for the establishment of a new Iraqi government while giving extraordinary powers to the occupiers. Conversely, they have accepted open-ended financial obligations that may yet prove exceptionally onerous for British taxpayers given the steadily falling estimates of Iraq's oil earnings in the next five years. But overall, this is a better outcome than might have been expected after all the pre-war ructions.

Despite the way it was achieved, the lifting of sanctions on Iraq, the cause of so many years of pointless suffering and fruitless argument, is a matter for celebration. So, too, is this symbolic and to a lesser degree practical reassertion of the UN's primacy in conferring both inter national legality and legitimacy. By forcing a softening of the US position, France in particular has helped Britain secure what Tony Blair calls a "solid basis" for future policy in Iraq but one which Mr Blair, despite his much-vaunted influence in Washington, could not by himself achieve. By accepting a text that they regard as less than perfect, France and its anti-war allies have served a larger cause by putting the UN "back in the game", as France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, puts it. After all the calumny unfairly heaped on French heads in recent months, Mr Blair and colleagues would do well to acknowledge this debt.

"CIA to Review Iraq Intelligence" -- Dana Priest and Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, 5/23/03:

The House intelligence committee, expressing concern about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, asked Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet yesterday "to reevaluate U.S. intelligence" used by the Bush administration before the war to describe Iraq's proscribed weapons programs and its links to terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.

The administration based its argument for going to war against Iraq on the dangers posed by Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its alleged ties to al Qaeda.

The CIA, at the suggestion of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, has an unusual study underway that will compare intelligence given to President Bush and other policymakers before the war to information now being gathered in Iraq from the ousted Iraqi government's files and interrogations of former Iraqi government personnel, according to senior intelligence officials. . . .

One official who has read a draft of the NIC and CIA prewar studies said, "There is no question there was a lot of pressure on analysts to support preconceived judgments." But, he added, "the analysts' record is not bad when you consider you have strong policymakers pushing analysts for information that supports their specific views."

Neither the agency's study nor the committee's request addresses how accurately top policymakers, in particular Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, portrayed the classified intelligence and advice they received before making their public statements.

"Blix Suspects There Are No Weapons of Mass Destruction" -- Rory McCarthy and Jeevan Vasagar in The Guardian, 5/24/03:

The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said yesterday that he suspected that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction,

He added that "in this respect" the war might not have been justified.

"I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction - and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were none," he said in an interview with the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. . . .

He referred to Saddam Hussein's chief scientific adviser, Lieutenant General Amer al-Saadi, who surrendered last month and said in an interview: "Nothing else will come out after the end of the war."

"The fact that al-Saadi surrendered and said there were no weapons of mass destruction has led to me to ask myself whether there actually were any," Dr Blix said.

"I don't see why he would still be afraid of the regime. Other leading figures have said the same." . . .

"U.S. Sped Bremer to Iraq Post" -- Karen DeYoung in The Washington Post, 5/24/03:

The appointment of L. Paul Bremer III early this month as the new head of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq, portrayed by the Bush administration as part of a smoothly running postwar plan, was a hastily arrived-at decision by a White House increasingly worried about collapsing civil order in Iraq, according to senior administration officials. . . .

Postwar plans drawn up in January and February included the eventual installation of a senior civilian "of stature" to be in charge of non-military aspects of the occupation during an indefinite period between Garner's early efforts and the election of an Iraqi government. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had interviewed and signed off on Bremer in April, but announcements of his appointment and departure were still seen as weeks, if not months, away.

Powell was "surprised" by the decision to advance Bremer's departure for Iraq, one official said, "but it was a nice surprise" since Bremer is a former Foreign Service officer. Rumsfeld, who was traveling overseas when the news broke here on May 1, approved of Bremer but was said to be irritated that reports portrayed the sudden decision as a victory for Powell. Rumsfeld issued a terse statement praising Garner and saying no decision on any change had been announced.

Garner, who now works for Bremer, originally signed up to stay in Iraq until July 1. It is not clear how long he will remain.

"U.S. May Let Kurds Keep Arms, Angering Shiites" -- Patrick E. Tyler in The New York Times, 5/24/03:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 23 -- The American occupation authority in Iraq, apparently preserving the prewar distinction between Kurdish-controlled northern areas and the rest of the country, will allow Kurdish fighters to keep their assault rifles and heavy weapons, but require Shiite Muslim and other militias to surrender theirs, according to a draft directive.

The plan has engendered intense criticism by Shiite leaders involved in negotiations with American and British officials who have met privately with the heavily armed political groups that have moved into the power vacuum here.

"Maybe we didn't fight with the coalition, but we didn't fight against them," said Adel Abdul Mahdi, an official of the largest Shiite group, which is headed by Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim. "We want conditions where all militias are dissolved and we will not accept that other militias will be allowed to stay there with their weapons while we will not be there with ours."

Under the draft order, obtained by The New York Times, "militias that assisted coalition forces who remain under the supervision of coalition forces" will be authorized "to possess automatic or heavy weapons." . . .

Besides the armed Shiite groups, the main militia in Iraq are the Kurds and the Free Iraqi Forces of the Iraqi National Congress under Ahmad Chalabi.

General McKiernan said today that Mr. Chalabi's militia was being "demilitarized."

When Mr. Chalabi's militia first surfaced in Iraq last month, it received training from under the supervision of an American Special Forces officer.

On Thursday night, armed fighters from the Iraqi National Congress engaged in a running gun battle with unknown foes during what was described as a search by Mr. Chalabi's forces for senior Baath Party members in a Baghdad suburb.

After the firefight, American troops raided Mr. Chalabi's headquarters at Baghdad's Hunting Club, arrested 35 of his militiamen and seized their weapons. They were released, Mr. Chalabi's group said in a statement, after an American military officer assigned as a liaison to the group intervened.

Kurdish and Shiite Muslim leaders confirmed in interviews this week that senior military commanders, including Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, the deputy commander of American forces in the region, and General McKiernan had briefed them on the disarmament directive and issued some pointed warnings that they would be disarmed by force if they did not comply.

"Which Democrat Will Speak Fiscal Truth?" -- Roger Altman in The Washington Post, 5/25/03:

Officially, all three Bush tax bills, taken together, are estimated to reduce federal revenue by approximately $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. But many of the cuts in each bill are disingenuously designed to lapse within this 10-year window. The administration knows that Congress won't likely allow taxes to go back up at those moments. Those cuts will be extended, and the ultimate reduction in federal revenue will approach an astounding $3 trillion. This means an average annual budget deficit of $420 billion over that period. We've never had a deficit that large in any single year, let alone 10 straight.

Juxtaposed against the gargantuan Social Security and Medicare actuarial deficits, this is ruinous fiscal policy and even worse social policy. But in raw political terms, it is brilliant. It paints the Democrats, and particularly their presidential candidates, into a corner. They are forced to support even larger deficits or call for a rollback of certain tax cuts or accept the utter absence of budget resources to pay for any new initiatives, from health care on down. Each of these choices is politically excruciating, just as the White House planned it.

But, perversely, there is a bright side. Problems this big lend themselves to simple approaches, such as these: (1) The Bush tax cuts are excessive and, in part, should be rolled back; and (2) future budget deficits should be smaller than the president is proposing. A Democrat with the courage to adopt these principles and communicate them effectively becomes the truth-teller and could go far. . . .

The task for the Democrats is twofold: first, to help the public understand these choices by explaining them effectively. That's not an impossible task. John F. Kennedy could have done it and so could Bill Clinton. Second, they must take the courageous step of advocating the fiscal policy we require: rolling back some of these Bush tax cuts. Only in this way can we pay for at least the few initiatives this society must have and shrink the future deficits this administration has created. Americans need to be reminded that just a few years ago, the achievement of a balanced budget for the first time in 50 years, and under a Democratic president, led to extraordinary prosperity.

Would this be politically suicidal? No. Just returning the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent (the Clinton rate), retaining the estate tax and leaving dividend taxation where it is saves nearly $1 trillion compared with the Bush plan. And the first step would affect only those with annual incomes over $400,000.

History tells us that Americans always respond to real leadership. We'll see if there is a presidential Democrat with the courage and communication skills to make this case. If there is one, next year's election may be much more competitive than you think.

"Red Cross Denied Access to PoWs" -- Ed Vulliamy in The Observer, 5/25/03:

The United States is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport, The Observer has learnt.

There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound, in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'dealt with' by the Americans, according to a US military source.

The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organisation believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat. All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or been turned down. . . .

The ICRC has gained access to prisoners held in camps at Umm Qasr in the south. But with regard to the larger numbers reportedly held in Baghdad, said Doumani, 'we are still waiting for the green light, more than a month after the end of the conflict. This is in breach of the third Geneva Convention.' She said the laws of war should give the ICRC access 'as quickly as possible'. . . .

Witnesses to the camps are few, since no Iraqi prisoners taken to them have been released. But a cameraman for the France 3 television channel, arrested at the Palestine Hotel, did manage a glimpse. Leo Nicolian has documentation signed by a Lieutenant Brad Fisher saying he was wrongly arrested (and beaten, with a black eye to prove it) for the alleged theft of a bag from an American reporter.

He was held at the tennis court compound along with, he said, about 50 other prisoners, and told he was detained 'for investigation'. On his way out, Nicolian said he passed a bigger encampment in which he saw 'hundreds of men' hooded, with their arms tied behind their backs.

"U.S. Eyes Pressing Uprising in Iran" -- Glenn Kessler in The Washington Post, 5/25/03:

The Bush administration, alarmed by intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda operatives in Iran had a role in the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia, has suspended once-promising contacts with Iran and appears ready to embrace an aggressive policy of trying to destabilize the Iranian government, administration officials said.

Senior Bush administration officials will meet Tuesday at the White House to discuss the evolving strategy toward the Islamic republic, with Pentagon officials pressing hard for public and private actions that they believe could lead to the toppling of the government through a popular uprising, officials said.

The State Department, which had encouraged some form of engagement with the Iranians, appears inclined to accept such a policy, especially if Iran does not take any visible steps to deal with the suspected al Qaeda operatives before Tuesday, officials said. But State Department officials are concerned that the level of popular discontent there is much lower than Pentagon officials believe, leading to the possibility that U.S. efforts could ultimately discredit reformers in Iran.

In any case, the Saudi Arabia bombings have ended the tentative signs of engagement between Iran and the United States that had emerged during the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. . . .

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accused Iran of harboring al Qaeda members. "There's no question but that there have been and are today senior al Qaeda leaders in Iran, and they are busy," Rumsfeld said. Iranian officials, however, have vehemently denied that they have granted al Qaeda leaders safe haven in the country.

Until the Saudi bombings, some officials said, Iran had been relatively cooperative on al Qaeda. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Iran has turned over al Qaeda officials to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. In talks, U.S. officials had repeatedly warned Iranian officials that if any al Qaeda operatives in Iran are implicated in attacks against Americans, it would have serious consequences for relations between the two countries.

"UN Chief Warns of Anti-American Backlash in Iraq" -- Rory McCarthy in The Guardian, 5/27/03:

The UN's most senior humanitarian official in Iraq warned yesterday that US attempts to rebuild the country were overly dominated by "ideology" and risked triggering a violent backlash.

Ramiro Lopes da Silva said the sudden decision last week to demobilise 400,000 Iraqi soldiers without any re-employment programme could generate a "low-intensity conflict" in the countryside. . . .

Mr Lopes da Silva said the UN "disagreed" with some of the decisions made by the US-led authority in Baghdad.

He was surprised the decision to disband the Iraqi military had not been accompanied by an attempt to reintegrate soldiers into society.

"The way the decision was taken leaves them in a vacuum," he said. "Our concern is that if there is nothing for them out there soon this will be a potential source of additional destabilisation."

Even US generals admitted at the time they feared the decision could worsen the lawlessness and looting. Mr Lopes da Silva said the demobilisation, along with tightened security in the capital, could force looters into the less well-guarded countryside.

"What you are potentially going to create is more banditry and a low-intensity conflict in the rural areas," he said. "These edicts are seen very much just as ideological statements."

Mr Lopes da Silva also questioned the authority's de-Ba'athification programme, under which up to 30,000 Ba'ath party officials are automatically excluded from office. "Many bureaucrats who have important experience that would help the new government were only Ba'ath party members on paper," he said.

In another step against the Ba'ath party yesterday, US military officials fired the police chief for west Baghdad against the advice of several American soldiers. Abdul Razak al-Abbassi, who for the past three weeks has helped bring hundreds of officers back to work, was dismissed because he had been a senior member of the Ba'ath party under Saddam.

"Are We Safer?" Stephen F. Cohen at The Nation Online, 5/19/03:

Will the Iraq war increase America's national security, as the Bush Administration has always promised and now insists is already the case, or will it undermine and diminish our national security, as thoughtful critics believed?

In the weeks, months and years ahead, we will learn the answer to that fateful question by judging developments by seven essential criteria:

(1) Will the war discourage or encourage other regional "preemptive" military strikes, particularly by nuclear-armed states such as, but not only, India and Pakistan? India has already evoked that newly proclaimed US doctrine in its conflict with Pakistan, as has Russia in its increasingly hostile relations with the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

(2) Indeed, will the Iraq war stop the proliferation of states that possess nuclear weapons or instead incite more governments to acquire them as a deterrent against another US "regime change"? If anything, North Korea and Iran have seemed even more determined to develop such weapons.

(3) Will the war, and the long US occupation that is likely to ensue, reduce the recruitment of young Arabs by terrorist movements or will it inspire many new recruits? The subsequent suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco suggest that the latter result will be the case.

(4) With or without more recruits, will the war decrease or increase the number of terrorist plots against the United States, whether at home or abroad? Here too the recent targeting of a US firm in Saudi Arabia and continuing "terrorist" attacks on American troops even in Iraq itself are not good signs.

(5) Will the war help safeguard the vast quantities of nuclear and other materials of mass destruction that exist in the world today, and the expertise needed to operationalize them, or make them more accessible to "evil-doers"? In this exceedingly perilous respect, the war may have aleady made things worse. Not only has the Bush Administration yet to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, its original professed purpose for attacking the country, but the war led directly to the looting of at least seven Iraqi nuclear facilities and thus possibly to a new kind of proliferation.

(6) In that connection, will Russia--which has more ill-secured devices of mass destruction than any other country and which strongly opposed and still resents the US war--now be more, or less, inclined to collaborate with Washington in safeguarding and reducing those weapons and materials? Again, the initial result has been contrary to American national security interests. On May 16, President Vladimir V. Putin announced that the Kremlin, like the White House, is likely to build even more nuclear weapons.

(7) Finally, considering the rampant anti-Americanism it has provoked, will the war result in more or fewer governments willing to cooperate with--individually or in multinational organizations like the United Nations--George W. Bush's stated top priority, the war against global terrorism? During the weeks since the military campaign ended, anti-American sentiments have continued to grow, from the Middle East to Western Europe, and the United Nations remains profoundly divided by the US war and its ugly aftermath in Iraq.

"For Partisan Gain, Republicans Decide Rules Were Meant to Be Broken" -- Adam Cohen in The New York Times, 5/27/03:

Republicans, who now control all three branches of the federal government, are not just pushing through their political agenda. They are increasingly ignoring the rules of government to do it. While the Texas redistricting effort failed, Republicans succeeded in enacting an equally partisan redistricting plan in Colorado. And Republicans in the Senate -- notably those involved in the highly charged issue of judicial confirmations -- have been just as quick to throw out the rulebook.

These partisan attacks on the rules of government may be more harmful, and more destabilizing, than bad policies, like the $320 billion tax cut. Modern states, the German sociologist Max Weber wrote, derive their legitimacy from "rational authority," a system in which rules apply in equal and predictable ways, and even those who lead are reined in by limits on their power. When the rules of government are stripped away, people can begin to regard their government as illegitimate. . . .

Weber, in writing about rules, was concerned about what factors kept governments in power. That is not a concern in the United States -- there is no uprising in the offing. But when Americans see their government flouting the rules, as they did during Watergate, they respond with cynicism.

In these hard times -- with threats from abroad and a sour economy at home -- our leaders should be bringing the nation together not by demonizing foreign countries, but by instilling greater faith in our own. They should be showing greater reverence for the rules of government, and looking for other ways -- like tougher campaign finance laws -- to assure Americans that their government operates evenhandedly.

Harpers Weekly Review, 5/27/03

"We've found the weapons of mass destruction" -- George W. Bush in an interview on Polish television, 5/30/03 (as transcribed at cnn.com):

We've found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations' resolutions and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on.

But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them.

"Hussein Backers Regain Role in Government" -- Paul Watson in The Los Angeles Times, 5/12/03:

MOSUL, Iraq -- The U.S. Army has allowed several once-forceful supporters of Saddam Hussein's regime back into power here, including a religious leader who just weeks ago ordered Muslims to fight American troops to the death.

Convinced that sweeping out all officials associated with Hussein would result in a government too weak to hold Iraq together, U.S. forces in Mosul hope to win over their enemies by allowing them to sit on a new interim city council. . . .

A powerful member of the new council is Sheik Saleh Khalil Hamoody, who also heads the Mosul region's council of Islamic scholars. Several days after U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq began, Hamoody issued a fatwa, or edict, declaring that it was the religious duty of all Muslims to fight U.S.-led forces.

"Our valiant Iraq is facing a noble and faithful battle against imperialist and Zionist attackers who hate us," said the fatwa, which was approved by the Islamic scholars council. "They aim to destroy Islam and its existence to achieve their goals of world domination and to guarantee security for Zionism and its future."

Hamoody is widely known in northwestern Iraq for his close ties to the former Baath Party regime. He is a cousin of Hussein's former defense minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, who is on the U.S. military's list of most-wanted fugitives.

Hamoody was elected to the interim city council at a May 5 convention of about 150 community elders despite assurances from the commander of American forces here that U.S. intelligence would weed out candidates who were too closely associated with the toppled regime.

U.S. Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of northwestern Iraq as commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said he is aware of anti-American sentiment among some religious leaders in Mosul. He also acknowledged in an interview that he had not been informed about Hamoody's fatwa, and he said he might ask the imam to withdraw it in an official statement.

"Surrounded by Chaos in Iraq, Middle Class Takes Up Arms" -- Laura King in The Los Angeles Times, 5/12/03:

Alarmed by a sharp upsurge in street crime -- brazen daylight robberies, continued looting and the relatively recent phenomenon of violent carjackings -- Baghdad's professional class is rapidly arming itself, drawing on a vast pool of illicit weaponry that has flooded the capital since the fall of Saddam Hussein and his regime. . . .

The nervous well-to-do are not the only ones purchasing guns in this country where the streets, at least, were safe under Hussein. Ad hoc militias, criminal gangs, ethnic Kurds and rural tribesman also are all on a weapons-buying binge -- a development that is worrying to the U.S. forces that are trying to restore some semblance of order in both the capital and the countryside.

Thriving weapons bazaars have sprung up all over Baghdad, ranging from small, surreptitious knots of dealers operating out of their cars to sprawling, semipermanent markets where the gun merchants helpfully organize themselves by specialty, price range and degree of firepower. Just about everything is on offer, from scope-fitted sniper rifles to rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

No one has tried to publicly estimate the number of light weapons and handguns that have made their way onto the open market -- other than to say that the quantity is enormous, even for a country with an established gun culture.

Weapons stocks at abandoned Iraqi military bases, together with formidable arsenals at neighborhood and district headquarters of Hussein's Baath Party, were picked clean by looters in the days after U.S. troops moved into Baghdad. And that doesn't even include the weapons the Baath Party handed out to residents before the war for their country's defense. Many of these guns are up for grabs.

"Garner Surrenders Control of Baghdad in Bloodless Coup" -- Richard Beeston in The London Times, 5/13/03:

THE fastest regime change in Iraqi history occurred at Baghdad airport yesterday when Paul Bremer, Washington's new proconsul, took over running the country from Jay Garner, the much-criticised retired US Army general.

After less than a month in charge of the vast post- war reconstruction operation, General Garner and five top aides were eased out in a bloodless coup after failing to get government running in Iraq and to restore a semblance of normality to Baghdad. . . .

Although US officials insisted that the arrival of Mr Bremer, who will work alongside John Sawers, Tony Blair's special envoy, was not a reflection on General Garner, the facts suggested otherwise.

Baghdad today is a city without essential utilities, law and order or a functioning government. Nor does there appear to be any detailed plan to curtail the anarchy and to restore basic public services. Arguably the situation, far from improving, is deteriorating, with potentially dangerous political consequences for the coalition.

Barbara Bodine, a former US Ambassador to Yemen who was supposed to run the Baghdad region, was among those returning home. At one recent meeting with the press, she was asked about the shooting of a dozen Iraqis by US troops in Fallujah, a town outside Baghdad and within her jurisdiction. It was clear from her answer that she was unaware of the incident, which was making headline news around the world.

Margaret Tutweiler, another senior US diplomat and for-mer State Department spokeswoman, was supposed to be in charge of communications, but repeatedly she refused to meet the media in Baghdad.

The most damning assessment of General Garner's team comes from many Iraqis. Over the past three weeks, I was asked repeatedly: "Who is in charge?" Nobody had heard of their new leader.

"Terror Test" -- Beverley Lumpkin at ABCNews.com, 5/12/03:

Twenty-five federal agencies, plus dozens of state, local and Canadian government agencies, and the American Red Cross are all participating in the $16 million, five-day exercise known as TOPOFF2 -- because it's the second national exercise to test the preparation and coordination of the nation's top officials, on a regional and national level. . . .

Today at noon local time in Seattle, smoke billows from a burning car as a "bomb" explodes near a coffee shop. As local officials scramble to deal with as many as 100 casualties, they learn that radiation levels in the area have been heightened. This is no ordinary bomb, but rather a radiological dispersion device, or "dirty bomb."

In Washington, Ridge declares that the national terror threat threat level has gone to "Red," signaling that the country is under attack. A command center for the National Capital Region comprising the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia springs into action, as does the DHS command center in Ridge's offices.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, the same terrorists, known as GLODO (Group for the Liberation of Orangeland and the Destruction of Others) are supposed to release a biological agent at five different sites, and people start to exhibit flu-like symptoms such as fever, chills and aches. In the TOPOFF2 scenario, this is no flu; the germ the terrorists release is bubonic plague. When inhaled, the bacteria can cause the highly contagious and often deadly pneumonic plague.

Over the next several days, the "victims" of the biological attack will start showing up at Chicago-area hospitals (66 in all) and gradually tax their resources. The physicians and other hospital workers engaged in the exercise must first make diagnoses, then carry out tests, then have the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirm their fears. Meanwhile the initial "victims" have been "contaminating" others.

There's an international component, as well. Canadian government agencies will get involved both because of the proximity of Vancouver, British Columbia, to the Seattle attack, and because some of Chicago's plague "victims" will start arriving at Canadian airports.

The end of the exercise will come with the FBI capturing the "terrorists" late Thursday or early Friday.

Harpers Weekly Review, 5/13/03

"WMDs for the Taking?" -- Rod Nordland in Newsweek, 5/19/03 (accessed 5/13/03):

Looters outran the WMD hunters almost every time. "Once a site has been hit with a 2,000-pound bomb, then looted, there's not a lot left," says Maj. Paul Haldeman, the 101st Airborne Division's top NBC officer. In the rush to Baghdad, Coalition forces raced past most suspected WMD sites, and looters took over. After Saddam's fall, there were too few U.S. troops to secure the facilities. Roughly 900 possible WMD sites appeared on the initial target lists. So far, V Corps officers say, fewer than 150 have been searched. "There aren't enough troops in the whole Army," says Col. Tim Madere, the overseer of V Corps's sensitive-site teams. "There just aren't enough experts to do everything." . . .

Some of the lapses are frightening. The well-known Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, about 12 miles south of Baghdad, had nearly two tons of partially enriched uranium, along with significant quantities of highly radioactive medical and industrial isotopes, when International Atomic Energy Agency officials made their last visit in January. By the time U.S. troops arrived in early April, armed guards were holding off looters -- but the Americans only disarmed the guards, Al Tuwaitha department heads told NEWSWEEK. "We told them, 'This site is out of control. You have to take care of it'," says Munther Ibrahim, Al Tuwaitha's head of plasma physics. "The soldiers said, 'We are a small group. We cannot take control of this site'." As soon as the Americans left, looters broke in. The staff fled; when they returned, the containment vaults' seals had been broken, and radioactive material was everywhere.

U.S. officers say the center had already been ransacked before their troops arrived. They didn't try to stop the looting, says Colonel Madere, because "there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place." Last week American troops finally went back to secure the site. Al Tuwaitha's scientists still can't fully assess the damage; some areas are too badly contaminated to inspect. "I saw empty uranium-oxide barrels lying around, and children playing with them," says Fadil Mohsen Abed, head of the medical-isotopes department. Stainless-steel uranium canisters had been stolen. Some were later found in local markets and in villagers' homes. "We saw people using them for milking cows and carrying drinking water," says Ibrahim. The looted materials could not make a nuclear bomb, but IAEA officials worry that terrorists could build plenty of dirty bombs with some of the isotopes that may have gone missing. Last week NEWSWEEK visited a total of eight sites on U.N. weapons-inspection lists. Two were guarded by U.S. troops. Armed looters were swarming through two others. Another was evidently destroyed many years ago. American forces had not yet searched the remaining three.

"Baghdad Anarchy Spurs Call for Help" -- Peter Slevin in The Washington Post, 5/13/03:

BAGHDAD, May 12 -- Baghdad residents and U.S. officials said today that U.S. occupation forces are insufficient to maintain order in the Iraqi capital and called for reinforcements to calm a wave of violence that has unfurled over the city, undermining relief and reconstruction efforts and inspiring anxiety about the future.

Reports of carjackings, assaults and forced evictions grew today, adding to an impression that recent improvements in security were evaporating. Fires burned anew in several Iraqi government buildings and looting resumed at one of former president Saddam Hussein's palaces. The sound of gunfire rattled during the night; many residents said they were keeping their children home from school during the day. Even traffic was affected, as drivers ignored rules in the absence of Iraqi police, only to crash and cause tie-ups. . . .

[T]he British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, expressed disappointment with efforts so far to bring democracy to Iraq. He told the British Parliament that "results in the early weeks have not been as good as we would have hoped." Straw also said the lack of security in Baghdad has been disappointing.

An office and warehouse belonging to the aid group CARE were attacked Sunday night. In two other weekend incidents, two CARE vehicles were seized by armed men, the organization reported today, asking the U.S. occupation forces to "take immediate steps to restore law and order to Baghdad."

"The violence is escalating," said Anne Morris, a senior CARE staff member. "We have restricted staff movement for their own safety. What does it say about the situation when criminals can move freely about the city and humanitarian aid workers cannot?" . . .

The Pentagon announced early this month that an additional 4,000 soldiers were being dispatched to Baghdad, bringing the total in the city to 16,000. The composition of the force will shift as combat units head home and the number of military police officers grows from 2,000 to about 4,000 by mid-June.

Mujahidin begin surrendering to US forces (Stephen Farrell, "Foreign Forces Must Go, Insists Shia Ayatollah," London Times, 5/12/03):

Ashraf Base, Iraq: Iranian rebels in Iraq have begun to surrender to US forces under a deal that effectively ends the heavily armed People's Mujahidin as a fighting force. US forces in Iraq said in a statement that the decades-old group agreed at high-level talks that within a week all of its thousands of fighters would be detained by US. The Mujahidin, labelled terrorists by Washington, also accepted that all their heavy weapons would be placed in a desert base near the Iranian border and controlled by US troops.

"Kurdish Leader Warns U.S. That Iraq Violence Risks Gains" -- Patrick E. Tyler in The New York Times, 5/12/03:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 12 -- The Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who will play a crucial role in the formation of the interim government in Iraq, said today that the United States risked squandering its victory over Saddam Hussein by allowing chaos and anarchy to run unchecked in the country.

Mr. Barzani spoke in an interview on the day that a new civilian administrator, J. Paul Bremer III, arrived in the Iraqi capital to take over the task of rebuilding the country from Jay Garner, the retired Army lieutenant general first appointed to that mission. . . .

The sudden personnel overhaul has rattled Iraqi political leaders who have been working closely with General Garner, and none was more disappointed that Mr. Barzani, who worked with the general a decade ago when Iraq's Kurdish minority fled by the hundreds of thousands to the Turkish border region to escape the wrath of Mr. Hussein after an unsuccessful uprising.

"His departure will have a very negative effect," Mr. Barzani said. "The rapid change of officials is not very helpful because we need focus."

Elaborating, Mr. Barzani said that "major mistakes have been made" in the military and civilian management of postwar Iraq, "and if we continue in this confusion, this wonderful victory we have achieved will turn into a quagmire."

This concern now radiates far beyond the immediate region. In London today, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that "the situation in Baghdad is not satisfactory" and he acknowledged that it was the responsibility of the United States and its coalition partners "to ensure that it becomes satisfactory very quickly."

He spoke after meeting with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who conveyed an even stronger sense of alarm.

"In the majority of the country, there is instability, which threatens the territorial integrity and the unity of Iraq, which is of extreme concern to the countries of the region," Prince Saud said.

He said the ongoing violence, including almost hourly eruptions of gunfire in Baghdad, would undermine the distribution of humanitarian aide "and it threatens a breakdown in order altogether."

"US: 'Saddam Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction'" -- Neil Mackay in The Sunday Herald (Scotland), 5/11/03 (?):

The Bush administration has admitted that Saddam Hussein probably had no weapons of mass destruction.

Senior officials in the Bush administration have admitted that they would be 'amazed' if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq.

According to administration sources, Saddam shut down and destroyed large parts of his WMD programmes before the invasion of Iraq.

Ironically, the claims came as US President George Bush yesterday repeatedly justified the war as necessary to remove Iraq's chemical and biological arms which posed a direct threat to America.

Bush claimed: 'Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We will find them.'

The comments from within the administration will add further weight to attacks on the Blair government by Labour backbenchers that there is no 'smoking gun' and that the war against Iraq -- which centred on claims that Saddam was a risk to Britain, America and the Middle East because of unconventional weapons -- was unjustified.

The senior US official added that America never expected to find a huge arsenal, arguing that the administration was more concerned about the ability of Saddam's scientists -- which he labelled the 'nuclear mujahidin' -- to develop WMDs when the crisis passed.

This represents a clearly dramatic shift in the definition of the Bush doctrine's central tenet -- the pre-emptive strike. Previously, according to Washington, a pre-emptive war could be waged against a hostile country with WMDs in order to protect American security.

Now, however, according to the US official, pre-emptive action is justified against a nation which simply has the ability to develop unconventional weapons.

"Scaring America Half to Death" -- William Pfaff in The Daily Times (Pakistan), 5/14/03 (accessed 5/13/03):

The war against terrorism, like the war against Iraq, functions in all but total indifference to facts. An unnamed "senior Bush administration official" told the press last weekend that he would be amazed if weapons-grade plutonium or uranium were found in Iraq. It was also unlikely, he said, that biological or chemical weapons material would be found. He said that the United States never expected to find such a smoking gun.

What was the Iraq war all about then? The official said that what Washington really wanted was to seize the thousand nuclear scientists in Iraq who might in the future have developed nuclear weapons for Saddam Hussein. He described them as "nuclear mujahidin."

The preventive war, according to this redefinition, was not directed against an actual problem, but one that might have appeared in the future. One might have thought the official's statement merely an excuse for the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found, but this time it is President George W Bush who seems not to have been told. He is still assuring Americans that the illicit weapons will turn up.

On Democracy: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back" -- Josh Marshall in The Hill, 5/15/03:

Last week, [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz gave an interview to CNN-Turk, a joint venture of CNN and a Turkish media conglomerate. When asked about the future of U.S.-Turkish relations, Wolfowitz said that if Turkey wanted to get back into America's good graces, the Turks would have to admit they were wrong to deny the U.S. permission to use their territory as a staging ground for invading Iraq and, in essence, apologize.

That's a rough demand for a fellow democracy and a longtime ally. But what raised the ire of many Turks was another of Wolfowitz's statements: the Bush administration, he said, was disappointed that the Turkish military "did not play the strong leadership role on that issue [i.e., the Iraq debate] that we would have expected."

Outside the context of Turkish politics, that statement might seem obscure or insignificant. But in Turkey the meaning seemed painfully clear: The United States wished the Turkish military had either overruled the elected government or perhaps even pushed it aside in favor of one more subservient to U.S. demands. . . .

Turkey is currently struggling to accomplish something very similar to what we're trying to demonstrate in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East: that pluralism, democracy and Islam can peaceably coexist. It doesn't say much for our sincerity or seriousness if we push the generals to step in the moment we can't get the elected government to do our bidding. (It's not even shrewd politics since the Turkish military had its own reasons for resisting our plans for Iraq.)

"Straw Retreats on Finding Banned Weapons" -- Nicholas Watt in The Guardian, 5/15/03:

Britain back-tracked on the contentious issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction yesterday when the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was forced to concede that hard evidence might never be uncovered.

He said it was "not crucially important" to find them, because the evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing was overwhelming.

He dismissed the significance of the failure to find banned weapons on the grounds that Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, had uncovered a "phenomenal amount of evidence" before the war. . . .

As criticism for the failure to find banned weapons has increased, ministers have struggled to offer a plausible explanation. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, found himself the object of ridicule last month when he feigned ignorance of Downing Street's claim in last September's weapons "dossier" that an attack could be launched within 45 minutes.

He also caused some astonishment by declaring that the sudden onslaught of war, even though several days passed between the departure of inspectors and first bombings, prevented the Iraqis reassembling their hidden weapons.

He added to the confusion last night when he appeared to contradict both himself and Mr Straw by saying that allied troops would uncover evidence of banned weapons. . . .

Similar back-tracking is apparent in Washington where the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said last week that the US was pinning its hope on finding incriminating documents rather than actual weapons.

American exceptionalism in the voting booth.
"The Triumph of Hope over Self-Interest" -- David Brooks in The New York Times, 1/12/03 (reproduced at Labor21k list archives).

"David Nelson, Could You Step Aside for a Few Moments?" -- Margie Boulé in The Oregonian, 5/4/03:

If your name is David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in the United States for the foreseeable future.

Since the horrific attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the federal Transportation Security Administration has, without any public announcement, created a two-tiered list of names "to protect our aviation system," says Nico Melendez, the agency spokesman for the West Coast, who is based in Los Angeles.

The name David Nelson apparently is on one of those lists. . . .

One after another, local David Nelsons tell the same story: At airports their bags are put through bomb detectors; they are delayed, searched, questioned. . . .

As David Nelsons all over the country have learned, once your name is on the list, there's no way you can get it removed. Every time you go to an airport, you're assumed to be guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. . . .

Somewhere in the world there's an actual terrorist suspect named David Nelson who started all this mess. Several David Nelsons have been told by security or airline personnel that he's from Nashville.

But they're looking for him everywhere. Portland radiologist David Nelson "never could figure out why I was constantly getting flagged. Our bags would always come back with tape around them, saying they had been searched." His son and namesake, David Wesley Nelson, who's 27, thought he was always stopped "because of my age." When he flew to Los Angeles recently, "they gave me a big hassle because I didn't have a passport. I said, 'I don't normally carry a passport when traveling within the U.S.' "

"Healthcare for US Children: Controversial Budget-Cut Target" -- Alexandra Marks in The Christian Science Monitor, 5/14/03:

With a swipe of a budget-committee pen, Missouri almost dropped from one of the top states in caring for children to dead last.

Like lawmakers nationwide, Missouri legislators are struggling to close a gaping budget gap. Theirs is $323 million. So the house voted to eliminate its State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which insures children just over the poverty level - potentially making Missouri the first state to abolish the five-year-old program designed to give America's children the same medical care it affords the elderly.

From Connecticut to Montana, budget cutbacks are affecting everything from gym classes to fire stations. But one of the most emotional areas that may be pruned is children's healthcare. While every downturn brings fiscal dilemmas, the current quandary poses piercing questions about whether medical care is a right or a commodity, and where federal responsibility lies in caring for the vulnerable.

But one thing is clear: Hundreds of thousands of the more than 5 million children covered for the first time under SCHIP may find their insurance curtailed - or gone. Only a handful of states are talking about eliminating SCHIP. But dozens are trimming eligibility, benefits, and enrollment in a program that was the most dramatic expansion of low-income federal healthcare in 40 years. . . .

The battle over SCHIP in Missouri is typical of what's playing out nationwide. Opponents argue that the program is just too generous in tough fiscal times. Supporters - including parents, low-income advocates, economists, and health-policy analysts - argue that it saves money in the long term through preventive care.

Add to that the financial incentive from Washington. For every dollar Missouri spends on SCHIP, the federal government sends almost three: the state's contribution of $25 million was leveraging more than $72 million.

Then there's the healthcare spiral. If SCHIP were eliminated, another 83,000 would join Missouri's uninsured. Each time another person loses insurance, it adds to the crisis by sending costs higher. And each time costs rise, more people end up uninsured. . . .

For many healthcare advocates, this year is just round one in what they worry could be a slow erosion of SCHIP. The Bush administration has proposed combining SCHIP with Medicaid and turning the matching-grant programs into one block grant. Then, instead of federal funds increasing with state spending, each state would get a set amount of money. In exchange, the federal government would give states more flexibility in designing their own healthcare programs.

"In Reversal, Plan for Iraq Self-Rule Has Been Put Off" -- Patrick E. Tyler in The New York Times, 5/17/03:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 16 -- In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.

Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting tonight that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period, said Iraqis who attended the meeting. It was conducted by L. Paul Bremer, the new civilian administrator here. . . .

No date was set for creating an interim authority, and no details about its powers and functions were discussed in the meeting, the Iraqis said. Mr. Bremer said he would meet with the opposition leaders for further discussions in two weeks.

"They retracted what they said before," an Iraqi political figure said. The provisional government idea is gone, he said. As for the idea of convening a national assembly to select a government, he said, "there is no such thing anymore."

Today's decision was a disappointment for the former opposition forces and their supporters in the Pentagon and the Congress, where officials had been pressing for an early turnover of sovereign power to a government formed by the opposition groups.

On April 28, the United States and Britain sponsored a political gathering of about 300 Iraqis and supported their call for a national conference to meet by the end of May to select a transitional government. Zalmay Khalilzad, who has served as President Bush's envoy to the Iraqi opposition, was a co-chairman of the April meeting, but did not return to Iraq for tonight's meeting.

On May 5, Jay Garner, the civilian administrator who preceded Mr. Bremer, said the core of a new Iraqi government would emerge this month. "Next week, or by the second weekend in May, you'll see the beginning of a nucleus of a temporary Iraqi government, a government with an Iraqi face on it that is totally dealing with the coalition," General Garner said during a visit to Basra.

"No Political Fallout for Bush on Weapons" -- Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei in The Washington Post, 5/17/03:

Disarming Saddam Hussein of his "weapons of mass destruction" was the main justification the Bush administration used both at home and abroad for attacking Iraq. But while other countries that opposed the U.S. military action claim they are vindicated by the failure so far to find those weapons, Americans -- even some of Bush's political opponents -- seem content with the low-casualty victory and believe the discoveries of mass graves and other Hussein atrocities justify the war. . . .

According to a May 1 Gallup poll for CNN and USA Today, 79 percent of Americans said the war with Iraq was justified even without conclusive evidence of the illegal weapons, while 19 percent said discoveries of the weapons were needed to justify the war. An April Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 72 percent supported the war even without a finding of chemical or biological weapons. Similarly, a CBS News poll found that 60 percent said the war was worth the blood and other costs even if weapons are never found.

It's not that Americans don't care about finding the weapons Bush said Hussein had; in an April 16 Post-ABC poll, 47 percent said it was essential. But that made it a lower priority than providing humanitarian aid to Iraq and restoring order.

"If I were a Democratic candidate, I don't think I would be pushing this issue,' said Andrew Kohut, of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. He cited a Gallup poll in the early days of the war determining that 38 percent thought the war justified even if the banned weapons were not found; toward the end of the conflict, that figure jumped to 58 percent. . . .

But the international community may not be so understanding. False accusations about Iraq's weapons could make the rest of the world even more reluctant to join the next effort to enforce Bush's policy of striking at emerging threats. "The American public is moving on, but those countries that were skeptical of this war are going to continue to press on this point," said Jonathan Tucker, a weapons expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "The credibility of the administration and the U.S. intelligence community are still on the line. This whole doctrine of preemptive war is predicated on our ability to determine a country's potential threat before the weapons are used."

"Loyalty Day, 2003" -- whitehouse.gov, 4/30/03:

The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day," and I ask all Americans to join me in this day of celebration and in reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance. I also call upon government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Loyalty Day.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-seventh.

GEORGE W. BUSH

"The Wellspring of American Empire" -- James M. Banner Jr. in The Los Angeles Times, 4/30/03:

Skillfully negotiating with their French counterparts, Jefferson's emissaries in Paris, Robert Livingston and James Monroe, shook the huge, ripe Louisiana plum off its French tree. Jefferson overcame his constitutional scruples and agreed to the deal: $15 million for much of what would become the great interior territory of the United States. "An Empire for Liberty," he called it.

Rarely has such fruit been harvested so easily and cheaply -- no war, no conquest, little debt. And rarely has such fruit brought so many alloyed legacies.

The benefits of the Purchase were recognized immediately and realized quickly. The size of the infant republic, already in 1803 the largest in the world, doubled with few pen strokes and the exchange of modest funds. If the example of its young government and its unprecedented social ways weren't already distracting the governments of other nations, its greatly augmented size was enough to make the United States a force to reckon with.

But the huge territory that fell to the United States was not just the symbol of future strength. Those acres, whose exploration Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began that same year, were to yield agricultural and mineral bounty beyond the dreams of men. The roots of American economic might, planted earlier, suddenly reached deep and far.

Yet with bounty came aspiration and responsibility, both deeply stained. The spread of European settlement set in motion the extermination of the Indian tribes. And the new lands to the west released slavery to travel beyond the Mississippi River. The Louisiana Purchase bequeathed to us the racism, inequality, bad faith and shame that are with us still.

More to the point today, the acquisition of the vast Louisiana domains embedded in Americans' imagination a dream of missionary empire. The Purchase vastly strengthened an American disposition to claim for itself what it wished and gave it the muscle to do so. . . .

Goethe once remarked that the New World had it better than the Old. On the evidence of the Louisiana Purchase, he might more accurately have said that we have always had it easier -- an inland empire for virtually nothing, and then the rest for little blood or money. Today, we reap the harvest of such comparatively easy triumphs. Jefferson's empire for liberty, like all others, has always threatened to become a different kind of empire.

Ease is always the breeding ground of prideful acts, and imperial vision has always given way to rot. The empire of ancient Rome, Napoleon's France, Britain's world-circling rule and successive 20th century efforts of the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin to extend German and Soviet might all came to naught after causing immeasurable misery and death.

If Jefferson's Declaration of Independence gave Americans a noble and enduring way to think of themselves, the Louisiana Purchase encouraged them to realize that self-image in lesser, sometimes baser, forms. The great historian of that generation, David Ramsey, comparing the Purchase with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, wrote that "the acquisition of Louisiana is the greatest political blessing ever conferred on these states."

Already, 200 years ago, the hint of presumptuousness was in the air.

"Are We Dumb or Just Numb?" -- Robert Scheer in The Los Angeles Times, 4/29/03:

Forget truth. That is the message from our government and its apologists in the media who insist that the Iraq invasion is a great success story even though it was based on a lie.

In the statement broadcast to the Iraqi people after the invasion was launched, President Bush stated: "The goals of our coalition are clear and limited. We will end a brutal regime, whose aggression and weapons of mass destruction make it a unique threat to the world." To which Tony Blair added: "We did not want this war. But in refusing to give up his weapons of mass destruction, Saddam gave us no choice but to act."

That claim of urgency -- requiring us to short-circuit the U.N. weapons inspectors -- has proved to be a whopper of a falsehood. Late Sunday, the U.S. Army conceded that what had been reported as its only significant WMD find -- two mobile chemical labs and a dozen 55-gallon drums of chemicals -- "showed no positive hits at all" for chemical weapons. . . .

It is expected that despots can force the blind allegiance of their people to falsehoods. But it is frightening in the extreme when lying matters not at all to a free people. The only plausible explanation is that the tragedy of Sept. 11 so traumatized us that we are no longer capable of the outrage expected of a patently deceived citizenry. The case for connecting Saddam Hussein with that tragedy is increasingly revealed as false, but it seems to matter not to a populace numbed by incessant government propaganda.

The only significant link between Al Qaeda and Hussein centered on the Ansar al Islam bases in the Kurdish area outside of Hussein's control. That's the "poison factory" offered by Colin Powell in his U.N. speech to connect Hussein with international terror. But an exhaustive investigation by the Los Angeles Times of witnesses and material found in the area "produced no strong evidence of connections to Baghdad and indicated that Ansar was not a sophisticated terrorist organization." Moreover, the purpose of this camp was to foster a holy war of religious fanatics who branded Hussein as "an infidel tyrant" and refused to fight under the "infidel flag" of his hated secular regime.

The embarrassingly secular nature of the government was summarized in another Los Angeles Times story on the status of women: "For decades, Iraqi women -- at least those living in Baghdad and some other big cities -- have enjoyed a degree of personal liberty undreamed of by women in neighboring nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf emirates."

Those freedoms -- to drive, study in coeducational colleges and to advance in the professions -- are now threatened by the fundamentalist forces unleashed by the invasion. The former U.S. general now governing Iraq has stated that he will not accept a reversal of those freedoms, but our long history of cozy relationships with the oppressive Gulf regimes can't be reassuring to Iraq's women.

"The Loyal Opposition Goes AWOL" -- Joyce Appleby in The Los Angeles Times, 4/29/03:

President Bush's single-minded pursuit of regime change in Iraq during the last 15 months would not have surprised the unsentimental 18th century creators of our government. They expected the executive to pursue his foreign policy goals. What they would not have foreseen was Congress' supine acceptance of the president's usurpation of their constitutional authority to declare war and approve peace treaties. . . .

Explanations abound as to why Congress has failed to exercise its constitutional authority in the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But few would deny that a loyal opposition is needed more than ever today, as a president with a wind at his back and little ballast sails into new diplomatic waters.

What might an alternative foreign policy, championed by Congress, look like?

It could begin with the premise, shared by the administration, that the inordinate power of the U.S. gives it unique concerns that other nations do not have, both as a target of hostility and a possessor of military might. This recognition could lead to the frank admission that we will act on our own, if need be. "If need be" would be the anchor of an oppositional group that sought ways to avoid future unilateral, preemptive strikes.

Congress could insist on strengthening existing alliances, bolstering multilateral agreements and monitoring trouble spots, whether generated by famine, autocratic governments or handicaps in global commerce. It could lead world debate on health, birth control and sweat labor. It could articulate those venerable principles of American foreign policy that run counter to the radical bellicosity implicit in the Bush Doctrine.

Nothing can replace an opposition crafted within the walls of Congress, where constitutional authority over war and peace still lodges.

"
Iraqi Nuclear Site Is Found Looted; U.S. Team Unable to Determine Whether Deadly Materials Are Missing" -- Barton Gellman in The Washington Post, 5/4/03:

NEAR KUT, Iraq, May 3 -- A specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched after a month of official indecision to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, today found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing.

The discovery at the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility was the second since the end of the war in which a known nuclear cache was plundered extensively enough that authorities could not rule out the possibility that deadly materials had been stolen. The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the Direct Support Team, appeared to offer fresh evidence that the war has dispersed the country's most dangerous technologies beyond anyone's knowledge or control. . . .

U.S. authorities do not know what is missing, if anything, because of an ongoing conflict between the Bush administration and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as a dispute within the administration about how much to involve the IAEA in Iraq. The unresolved struggle has kept U.S. forces out of Tuwaitha's nuclear storage areas, but a brief outdoor inspection on April 10 found the door to one of them had been breached.

The special nuclear team that surveyed the Baghdad facility this morning had been eager to make the trip for weeks.

Twenty-three days ago, a smaller U.S. survey team passed by and recommended an immediate increase in security. The following day, April 11, the IAEA listed this site and Tuwaitha as the two requiring the most urgent protection from looters. U.S. Central Command sent a detachment of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division to control the facility's gate.

"Vilified Weapons Inspectors May Have Gotten It Right" -- Marian Wilkinson in The Sydney Morning Herald, 5/1/03:

President George Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is now acknowledging that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program is less clear-cut, and probably more difficult to establish, than the White House portrayed before the war.

She has no doubt that the US-led coalition, assisted by experts from Britain and Australia, will find Iraq's WMD programs. But for the first time, Dr Rice is saying publicly that it is less likely many actual weapons will be found. Rather, she described the programs as being hidden in so-called "dual use" infrastructure. In other words, chemicals and biological agents could be in plants, factories and laboratories capable of being used for legal and prohibited purposes. . . .

She had a new explanation too for Iraq's ability to launch these weapons that were not assembled. "Just-in-time assembly" and "just-in-time" inventory, as she put it.

But in the months before the Iraq war, Mr Bush and his advisers, including the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, gave far more frightening descriptions of Iraq's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

Addressing the UN Security Council on February 5, Mr Powell said recent intelligence showed a missile brigade outside Baghdad was "dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations". Mr Bush was equally alarmist, describing satellite evidence showing that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting Iraq's nuclear weapons programs with his top nuclear scientists, his "nuclear mujahideen". Iraq's deadliest weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists.

"We cannot wait for final proof," Mr Bush said. "The smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

When Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, suggested Iraq's WMD program could be more fragmented and degraded, he was pilloried as naive or incompetent. When his inspectors talked of a more complex search for WMD, where components or precursors could be in the form of legal, dual-use chemical or biological agents that had to be monitored, they were dismissed as flatfooted and overcautious.

Yet Dr Rice's descriptions of Iraq's weapons program is far closer to Dr Blix's analysis than she would want to concede.

"Iraqi Police, Looters Reappear in Baghdad Streets" -- Nadim Ladki, for Reuters, at Alertnet.org, 5/4/03:

BAGHDAD, May 4 (Reuters) - Hundreds of unarmed Iraqi police returned to Baghdad streets on Sunday under the supervision of U.S. forces trying to restore order in the chaotic capital.

But in a reminder of the mammoth task facing police, looters also made a comeback, making forays into a presidential palace to scavenge whatever was left from earlier bouts of looting. . . .

Baghdad's new police chief resigned on Saturday in a setback to U.S. efforts to revitalise the force.

U.S. forces spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Alan King quoted police chief Zuhir al-Naimi as saying he wanted to make way for a younger man. No other explanation was given for the resignation of a man appointed only on April 24.

A 10-nation force led by the United States, Britain and Poland plans to deploy in Iraq by the end of this month to try to stabilise a country rocked by lawlessness.

"Rare Pro-US Demo in Baghdad" -- AFP article reproduced at newindpress.com (undated; accessed 5/4/03)

BAGHDAD: Several dozen Iraqis staged a rally in Baghdad on Sunday to thank the United States for removing strongman Saddam Hussein.

"Yes, yes for democracy," they chanted in Arabic in front of the Palestine Hotel where many foreign correspondents are based.

Some of the banners in English held up at the demonstration read, "Iraqis thank the United States" and "Iraq-US cooperation equals peace."

"CEOs at Defense Contractors Earn 45% More" -- United for a Fair Economy, 4/28/03:

Median CEO pay at the 37 largest defense contractors rose 79 percent from 2001 to 2002, while overall CEO pay climbed only 6 percent, according to a new report from United for a Fair Economy, More Bucks for the Bang: CEO Pay at Top Defense Contractors, by Chris Hartman and David Martin.

Median pay was 45 percent higher in 2002 at defense contractors than at the 365 large companies surveyed by Business Week magazine. The typical U.S. CEO made $3.7 million in 2002, while the typical defense industry CEO got $5.4 million.

The jump in median defense contractor CEO pay far exceeded the increase in defense spending, which rose 14 percent from 2001 to 2002.

Compared with an army private's pay of $19,585, the average CEO at a major defense contractor made 577 times as much in 2002, or $11,297,548. This is also more than 28 times as much as the Commander in Chief's salary of $400,000.

The study also looked at the size of campaign contributions by the largest defense contractors and found a strong correlation between campaign contributions made by a company in the 2000 and 2002 election cycles and the value of defense contracts awarded to that company. Ninety percent of the difference in contract size can be accounted for by size of contributions. For example, top arms contractor Lockheed Martin was also the top campaign contributor among defense firms.

"The Corps Cored" -- Michael Grunwald at Slate.com, 5/5/03:

The Bush administration is maniacally intolerant of dissent. It doesn't give a damn what Congress thinks about anything. The good news is: That combination of enforced loyalty and executive arrogance is reining in the environmentally disastrous, economically ludicrous pork-barrel projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This fledgling corps reform campaign hasn't gotten much attention -- because "corps reform" sounds like something Michael Dukakis might read about on the beach, and environmentalists are too busy portraying President Bush as the second coming of the Exxon Valdez to give credit where it's due -- but corps reform could end up doing more to benefit the American environment than a dozen Arctic refuges. . . .

The Army Corps is one of the most bizarre bureaucracies in the federal government and one of the most effective at generating work to keep itself busy. From its roots as a tiny regiment in George Washington's army, it has grown into a public works behemoth with 35,000 employees -- more than the departments of Labor, Education, and Energy combined. A third of them work on military programs that are usually uncontroversial -- the recent flap over the contract to Halliburton in Iraq was an exception -- but the rest focus on civil works that reflect the agency's addictions to concrete and the control of nature. The corps has dredged and deepened America's ports and harbors, armored and manhandled America's rivers, and pumped sand onto America's beaches. It has built thousands of dams, dikes, locks, levees, seawalls, and floodgates, often justified by dubious economic benefits. And in the late 1990s, under leaders who behaved like dot-com executives seeking to increase market share -- "Seek Growth Opportunities" was actually one of three planks of the agency's "Corps Vision" -- the corps mission expanded to include construction of schools and sewage plants, cleanup of hazardous and radioactive waste, and massive restoration projects designed to revive ecosystems it damaged in the past. It is now overseeing an $8 billion effort to resuscitate the Florida Everglades, the largest environmental project in world history.

Over the years, the corps has become a true rogue agency, operating virtually independently of its supposed bosses in the executive branch, taking marching orders almost exclusively from the congressional porkers who lard its budget with their pet projects. The corps has clashed with every president since Franklin Roosevelt, and it has won almost every battle, thanks to its protection racket on Capitol Hill. In 2000, for example, after corps leaders were caught manipulating an economic study in order to justify a billion-dollar Mississippi River project and devising a secret "Program Growth Initiative" in order to boost their budget by 50 percent, the Clinton administration tried to issue a few mild guidelines reminding them to obey civilian authorities. But a few powerful senators vowed that the guidelines would not stand, so the administration withdrew them a week later. Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., then proposed legislative language designed to prevent any administration from changing anything about the corps at any time.

"Bush Shifts Focus to Nuclear Sales by North Korea" -- David E. Sanger in The New York Times, May 5, 2003:

CRAWFORD, Tex., May 4 -- Tacitly acknowledging that North Korea may not be deterred from producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, President Bush is now trying to marshal international support for preventing the country from exporting nuclear material, American and foreign officials say. . . .

For a decade, the United States' declared policy has been that North Korea would be prevented, by any means necessary, from producing plutonium or highly enriched uranium. President Bill Clinton ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for a military strike when the North threatened to begin production in 1994, but a nuclear freeze agreement was reached later that year.

Mr. Bush's new focus on blocking the sale of nuclear material to countries or terrorist groups reflects intelligence officials' conclusion that they cannot ascertain whether North Korea was bluffing when it claimed last month that it had already reprocessed enough spent nuclear fuel to make many weapons.

"The president said that the central worry is not what they've got, but where it goes," said an official familiar with the talks between Mr. Bush and Mr. Howard. "He's very pragmatic about it, and the reality is that we probably won't know the extent of what they are producing. So the whole focus is to keep the plutonium from going further."

"Missing in Action: Truth" -- Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, 5/6/03:

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted -- except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.

"It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said.

Another example is the abuse of intelligence from Hussein Kamel, a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein and head of Iraq's biological weapons program until his defection in 1995. Top British and American officials kept citing information from Mr. Kamel as evidence of a huge secret Iraqi program, even though Mr. Kamel had actually emphasized that Iraq had mostly given up its W.M.D. program in the early 1990's. Glen Rangwala, a British Iraq expert, says the transcript of Mr. Kamel's debriefing was leaked because insiders resented the way politicians were misleading the public.

Harpers Weekly Review, 5/6/03

"President Picks a Special Envoy to Rebuild Iraq" -- James Dao and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times, 5/7/03:

WASHINGTON, May 6 -- President Bush today announced the appointment of L. Paul Bremer III, a retired diplomat and counterterrorism expert, as his special envoy to Iraq, making him the senior civilian in charge of rebuilding the country's government and infrastructure.

Mr. Bremer will take charge of a multibillion-dollar enterprise currently run by a retired lieutenant general, Jay Garner, who reports to Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of allied forces in Iraq. Mr. Bremer will report directly to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, administration officials said.

The shift underscores the White House's intention to speed the transition from a military occupation toward civilian administration, senior administration officials said. Although he is largely being supplanted by Mr. Bremer, to whom he will report, the officials said General Garner would not resign, even as his role was still being worked out. In Iraq today, General Garner confirmed as much, saying: "I'll stay awhile. There's got to be a good handoff."

By announcing the appointment himself, and by elevating Mr. Bremer to the level of presidential envoy, Mr. Bush sought to resolve a sharp dispute over the last several days between the State Department and the Pentagon for control of the reconstruction project. The State Department has argued that a civilian with diplomatic skills and foreign policy experience should coordinate reconstruction, while Pentagon officials have insisted that the project remain under the military's control. . . .

Sean McCormack, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said Mr. Bremer, who may leave for Iraq as soon as this weekend, would guide overall reconstruction policy while General Garner would handle day-to-day reconstruction work.

"General Garner will continue doing what he's been doing, getting the lights turned on, the water flowing, the sewers working," Mr. McCormack said.

Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been the White House liaison to former Iraqi opposition groups, will also stay on to advise Mr. Bremer on Iraqi politics and assist in starting a representative government, Mr. McCormack said.

While administration officials described the appointment as a compromise, some analysts said the Pentagon had still come out on top because Mr. Bremer would still take his orders from Mr. Rumsfeld.

"My sense is that no one can claim this is a Powell victory," said Ivo Daalder, a former National Security aide in the Clinton administration who now works at the Brookings Institution. "The person you report to is the key, and while Bremer reports to the president, he does it through Rumsfeld, not Powell."

"Paul Bremer, Iraq's New Interim Governor" -- Nuh Gonultas in Byegm, 5/8/03; translated and summarized at Turkishpress.com, 5/8/03:

The appointment of an anti-terrorism expert like Bremer becomes even more telling when one realizes that US designs in Iraq have far-reaching implications for the entire Middle East region.

Bremer, 62, once chaired an anti-terrorism commission in the US, and was part of a group which fully a year-and-a half before the Sept. 11 attacks prepared a report warning of a 'grave terrorist threat.' The report predicted that in the not-too-distant future, the US could fall prey to a devastating terrorist attack rivaling the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

The US is now moving to abandon its bases in Saudi Arabia and no longer needs Turkey's military assistance. Iraq is the new staging ground for US forces in the Middle East. But what does all this mean? Bush's choice of a retired anti-terrorism expert rather than an ex-military man gives us clues to the answer to this question: The US' top priority in Iraq is not the country's reconstruction but rather gaining an extensive foothold in the region, under the guise of the war against terrorism, so as to be able to besiege all the countries of the Middle East. According to Bremer, to prevent new terrorist attacks against the US, countries such as Libya and Iran must be strictly controlled and kept under constant pressure.

"Hussein Loyalists Rise Again, Enraging Iraqis" -- Patrick E. Tyler in The New York Times, 5/8/03:

Last week, Robin Rafael, an American diplomat working under Jay Garner, the retired American lieutenant general who has been in charge of reconstruction here, decided to reinstate the Baath Party leadership of Baghdad University, the largest in the country. Mr. Hussein's personal physician, Muhammad al-Rawi, who is president of the university, was granted permission to preside over the graduation of 17,000 seniors who will return to classes on May 17.

Ms. Rafael, like most American officials here, is working behind heavy security that prevents contact with a broad cross-section of Iraqis or anyone else. She was not available for comment. But one of her colleagues suggested that her decision was a pragmatic one to get the university open under current management and then try to sort out the Baathists later.

One man with strong feelings about this decision is Professor Hilal al-Bayyati, a computer scientist who studied in the United States during the 1960's and built the National Computer Center in Iraq. During the months after his arrest in late 2000, he found himself talking to insects.

By the thousands they shared his 6-foot-by-4-foot cell at the intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. . . .

So Mr. Bayyati and some of his colleagues have sprung into action to seek reversal of Ms. Rafael's decision. First they organized a committee of faculty members that met to demand new elections for deans, department heads and administrators as a means to throw out Dr. Rawi and the other senior Baathists at the university.

Dr. Rawi locked them out of the meeting hall, but more than 250 of them they managed to convene anyway and quickly agreed to resist the administration and seek American support. They demanded that the university groundskeepers tear down a statue of Mr. Hussein. But the maintenance staff refused, saying Dr. Rawi had given no such order.

When American officials would not meet with them, Mr. Bayyati and his colleagues went to the headquarters of Ahmad Chalabi, one of the political figures who has returned to Iraq and is working with both American forces and other political groups to form an interim government. Like all of the political headquarters in Baghdad, Mr. Chalabi's is accessible to Iraqis in every way the American headquarters is not.

"There are walk-ins here," said one American official. "We can't have walk-ins over there," he added, referring to General Garner's headquarters at Mr. Hussein's Republican Palace.

Mr. Chalabi and his security staff organized a raid on the university. The Hussein statue was leveled by an armored vehicle and its head cut off and returned like a trophy to the lawn of Mr. Chalabi's headquarters.

On Monday, Mr. Bayyati went to Ms. Rafael's fortified headquarters and handed a note to an American soldier to deliver to her.

"I stood in the sun for one-and-a-half-hours," he said. "I didn't get any answer and I couldn't enter."

But as he turned to leave, Mr. Bayyati caught sight of a face he would never forget, that of Ali al-Jabouri, the warden of Abu Ghraib prison, where the professor spent 18 months in a sea of Iraqis headed for secret execution.

The warden, a senior Baath Party official, approached and kissed him on both cheeks and told him that the best thing about his job had been meeting people like the professor. Then he went past the American guards and inside the building. He did not say who he was going to see, the professor said.

"Cheney Oil Firm Widens Iraq Role" -- Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian, 5/8/03:

Halliburton, the company formerly run by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, has been granted a far broader role in Iraq than previously disclosed and is already operating oilfields in the country, the US army admitted yesterday.

Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is pumping up oil despite earlier claims that its contract with the American government was for fighting oil fires, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers told the Guardian.

The bigger role, said corps spokesman Scott Saunders, was being exercised "due to the needs of the Iraqi people". About 125,000 barrels a day were produced, he said, for domestic purposes only.

The revelation came after Henry Waxman, a Democratic congressman, published correspondence in which the army said KBR's emergency contract allowed for its involvement in "operation of facilities and distribution of products". The existence of the contract, awarded with no competition before the war, was made public only in March.

"Diplomats on the Defensive" -- Sonni Efron in The Los Angeles Times, 5/8/03:

Diplomats interviewed for this story -- all of whom insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the political infighting -- said they are profoundly worried about what they describe as the administration's arrogance or indifference to world public opinion, which they fear has wiped out, in less than two years, decades of effort to build goodwill toward the United States. . . .

"The votes [against the U.S.] in the U.N. had nothing to do with Iraq. It was personal" toward America, a senior diplomat said. "I don't think this group realizes how arrogant they come off. It's a PR nightmare."

The official said he agreed with the president's decision to go to war in Iraq, and so did most officials at State, contrary to the department's reputation among neoconservatives as a bastion of wimpy multilateralism. "The issue for a lot of us is the way it's been done," he said. . . .

Many inside the Beltway regard the increasingly public rift between the agencies as just another in unending bureaucratic wars that mark life in Washington, but one that could damage U.S. interests if it encourages foreign countries to try to exploit the conflict. In South Korea, for example, many officials believe the North Korean leadership is more likely to miscalculate U.S. intentions because of the policy rift between administration hawks and doves. . . .

[W]hat is widespread within the State Department is the view that the U.S. intervention in Iraq ultimately must be judged in part by whether it generates more anti-American terrorism. Diplomats worry that the administration is insensitive to the risks its policies carry.

"When I was a kid, conservatives were the ones who did not want to take big risks" to change the world, recalled one middle-aged veteran at State, adding that "these people seem willing to take huge risks" that can truly be termed radical.

"Their willingness to roll the dice with people's lives I find troubling," he said.

"Iraq's Ragged Reconstruction" -- Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Peter Slevin in The Washington Post, 5/9/03:

A month after U.S. forces seized Baghdad, the Pentagon's occupation authority remains plagued by insufficient resources and inadequate preparations, fueling complaints from Iraqis and doubts about the Bush administration's promise to reconstruct the country swiftly and set its politics on a new, democratic course. . . .

Officials in the White House, Pentagon and State Department said before the war that speedy delivery of supplies was needed to help build Iraqi support for a difficult transformation to follow. But failure to provide salaries and restore a sense of security after a month threaten to do the opposite, alienating the population and impeding an already difficult reconstruction. In addition, some Iraqis have been angered by U.S. decisions to invite former members of the corrupt police force to return to work and to allow members of Hussein's Baath Party to reclaim senior government jobs.

In this atmosphere, anti-American sentiments appear to be growing: among people waiting in cars for a whole day to get gas, among military veterans milling about officers' clubs with the hope someone will arrive with their pensions, among college students upset that Baathist administrators are back on the job.

When several hundred people seeking jobs were turned away from a hotel recently by U.S. soldiers, they held a spontaneous protest and began chanting: "Down! Down! U.S.A." Then, comparing President Bush to the fictional thief from "A Thousand and One Nights," they yelled: "Bush! Bush! Ali Baba!"

The slow start also has prompted clerics, tribal sheiks and once-exiled opposition leaders to fill the void, particularly the Shiite Muslim clergy eager to claim political influence in a country with a 60 percent Shiite majority. Many have assumed roles as de facto mayors and neighborhood bosses, setting up militias to guard against looters, commandeering generators to provide power and distributing food seized from government warehouses.

Many clerics and sheiks have no intention of ceding those roles when a new government is formed, raising the possibility of a struggle between U.S.-sanctioned national leaders and self-proclaimed local ones. . . .

One concept common to most of the plans, U.S. officials said, was to hit the ground running. There was a recognition it would be important for the reconstruction team to develop momentum quickly if it wanted to realize its long-term ambition of transforming Iraq into a stable democracy.

But when Baghdad fell, Garner and his team remained in Kuwait because the military said it was too dangerous for them to work in Iraq. It was not until April 21, 12 days after Hussein's rule collapsed, that Garner and a small group of aides arrived in Baghdad; the bulk of his staff drove up a few days later.

"There was lots of talking about it, but just not enough doing it," said an aide to Garner who advises one of Iraq's ministries.

Problems inside Garner's headquarters -- the 258-room Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris River -- illustrate the point. Garner's aides, assigned to run the most important ministries and the Baghdad city government, do not have working telephones in their offices. They waste time walking corridors in search of one another. If they want to communicate with the outside world, they must stand outdoors and use handheld satellite telephones, which do not work indoors.

"There was supposed to be a cell phone network set up for 5,000 phones. Where the hell are they?" one exasperated Garner aide said.

"Operation Desert Snipe": On the hunt for banned weapons in Iraq and administration hedging, back to Fall 2002, about the prospect that none would be found (The Cogent Provocateur, 4/23/02).

"Rolling Back the 20th Century" -- William Greider in The Nation, 5/12/03:

The movement's grand ambition -- one can no longer say grandiose -- is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President.


Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth -- both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes -- are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.

These broad objectives may sound reactionary and destructive (in historical terms they are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and "statist" left-wingers. They do not expect any of these far-reaching goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure, but they do assume that history is on their side and that the next wave will come along soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given their great gains during the past thirty years). Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and fratricidal -- now understand that three steps forward, two steps back still adds up to forward progress. It's a long march, they say. Stick together, because we are winning.

Many opponents and critics (myself included) have found the right's historic vision so improbable that we tend to guffaw and misjudge the political potency of what it has put together. We might ask ourselves: If these ideas are so self-evidently cockeyed and reactionary, why do they keep advancing? The right's unifying idea--get the government out of our lives--has broad popular appeal, at least on a sentimental level, because it represents an authentic core value in the American experience ("Don't tread on me" was a slogan in the Revolution). But the true source of its strength is the movement's fluid architecture and durability over time, not the passing personalities of Reagan-Gingrich-Bush or even the big money from business. The movement has a substantial base that believes in its ideological vision--people alarmed by cultural change or injured in some way by government intrusions, coupled with economic interests that have very strong reasons to get government off their backs--and the right has created the political mechanics that allow these disparate elements to pull together. Cosmopolitan corporate executives hold their noses and go along with Christian activists trying to stamp out "decadent" liberal culture. Fed-up working-class conservatives support business's assaults on their common enemy, liberal government, even though they may be personally injured when business objectives triumph.

The right's power also feeds off the general decay in the political system -- the widely shared and often justifiable resentments felt toward big government, which no longer seems to address the common concerns of ordinary citizens.

I am not predicting that the right will win the governing majority that could enact the whole program, in a kind of right-wing New Deal--and I will get to some reasons why I expect their cause to fail eventually. The farther they advance, however, the less inevitable is their failure.

"Hatch Group May Go 'Nuclear' on Judges" -- Alexander Bolton and Geoff Earle in The Hill, 5/12/03:

Several senior Republican senators are seeking wider party backing for a bold plan that would break the Democrats' filibuster of President Bush's judicial nominees.

Their approach calls for employing a rarely used parliamentary tactic to overturn current Senate procedures.

Under the strategy envisioned by Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), among others, the Republicans would strip any Senate minority -- currently the Democrats -- of their ability to filibuster presidential nominees.

Approval by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), which is being sought, would all but assure that the plan would go forward.

Under the most likely scenario now under discussion, they would secure a ruling from the chair that Senate Rule XXII does not apply to executive submissions to the Senate -- and that includes judicial nominees. Rule XXII provides for unlimited debate on all legislative issues that reach the floor unless three-fifths of the Senate calls a halt.

With such an approach, a favorable ruling from the chair on limiting the scope of Rule XXII could stand after only a simple majority approved it.

Anticipating these moves, Democrats have already asked the Senate parliamentarian to weigh in on the issue in their defense.

From the standpoint of the proponents, the appeal of this “silver-bullet��? strategy is that it would quash the Democratic blockade without requiring 60 votes, the number needed by current rules to halt such delaying tactics, or 67 votes, the number needed to change a filibustered Senate rule.

One drawback of this proposed tactic is that it might destroy whatever is left of the working relationship between Democrats and Republicans. That is why some legislative experts liken the parliamentary tool to a legislative nuclear bomb.

"An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11" -- Allan Wood and Paul Thompson at The Center for Cooperative Research, 5/9/03:

Bush's actions on September 11 have been the subject of lively debate, mostly on the internet. Details reported that day and in the week after the attacks - both the media reports and accounts given by Bush himself - have changed radically over the past 18 months. Culling hundreds of reports from newspapers, magazines, and the internet has only made finding the "truth" of what happened and when it happened more confusing. In the changed political climate after 9/11, few have dared raise challenging questions about Bush's actions. A journalist who said Bush was "flying around the country like a scared child, seeking refuge in his mother's bed after having a nightmare" and another who said Bush "skedaddled" were fired. . . . We should have a concise record of where President Bush was throughout the day the US was attacked, but we do not.

What follows is an attempt to give the most complete account of Bush's actions - from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska to Washington, DC.

(Emperors-clothes.com has more.)

"Bush, Blair Nominated for Nobel Prize for Iraq War" -- Alister Doyle for Reuters on Yahoo! News, 5/8/03:

A Norwegian parliamentarian nominated President Bush . . . and British Prime Minister Tony Blair . . . for the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, praising them for winning the war in Iraq . . .

"Sometimes it's necessary to use a small and effective war to prevent a much more dangerous war in the future," Jan Simonsen, a right-wing independent in Norway's parliament, told Reuters.

"New US Civilian Head Arrives in Iraq" -- The Guardian, 5/12/03:

The new American civilian administrator of Iraq arrived in Baghdad today amid a shake-up of key US reconstruction personnel.

Paul Bremer, a former ambassador and head of America's counter-terrorism office, takes over from the retired general Jay Garner in the latest sign of US frustration over the failure of its post-war team to restore order.

The move comes one day after the Bush administration sacked Barbara Bodine, the US coordinator for central Iraq, after only three weeks in the post. Four more key personnel from the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance are expected to be flown home in the coming days, according to a report in today's New York Times.

Mr Bremer stopped in Basra before flying on to the capital, where the civilian reconstruction agency is based. He said: "We intend to have a very effective, efficient and well-organized handover."

Asked whether he was, in effect, directing a US plan to colonise Iraq, Mr Bremer said: "The coalition did not come to colonise Iraq. We came to overthrow a despotic regime. That we have done. Now our job is to turn and help the Iraqi people regain control of their own destiny."

Attempting to stifle reports that his replacement of Mr Garner represented a policy shift, Mr Bremer said: "I also want to say how proud I am of the work my good friend Jay Garner and the people who are working for him, how proud I am of everything they have done here in the last couple of weeks under extraordinary circumstances." He said Bodine was being reassigned back to Washington by the state department "for its own reasons."

"US Sacks Its Woman in Baghdad" -- Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian, 5/12/03:

The US yesterday sacked one of its most senior envoys to Iraq after only three weeks, in an admission that the task of running the country is proving tougher than expected.

With Baghdad still in a state of chaos, there was a whiff of panic about Washington's removal of the top layer of its team responsible for reconstruction. There was also a hint that it is being forced to rethink its post-war strategy.

Barbara Bodine, the US coordinator for central Iraq, was ordered back to Washington, a casualty of the failure to restore law and order or basic public services to the capital, Baghdad. . . .

Ms Bodine, a former ambassador to Yemen, has been a victim of Iraq before: she was on assignment in Kuwait before the 1991 Gulf war and was held captive for 137 days by Saddam's invading forces.

Her relations with Gen Garner are reported to have been strained, and she was also said to have been unhappy at the dispatch of Paul Bremer, a former US diplomat, to oversee the political process. He is due in Iraq this week.

Britain has sent John Sawyer, an ex-ambassador to Cairo and former Downing Street policy adviser, to work alongside Mr Bremer. Mr Sawyer, who has been designated special envoy to the Iraq political process, said he wanted a new Iraqi government that was broad-based and credible.

"Weapons Taskforce Leaves in Failure" -- Rory McCarthy in The Guardian, 5/12/03:

The US military task force hunting for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq is to leave within a month, having found no trace of any illegal weapons, according to a report yesterday.

Troops with the 75th Exploitation Task Force, which has led the search for Saddam Hussein's banned weapons programme over the past seven weeks, say they are increasingly frustrated with their failure to find any banned weapons, the Washington Post said. . . .

Another, larger US force -- the Iraq Survey Group -- will be sent out to continue the search for weapons, but it will include fewer specialists, the paper said. Coalition officials, including George Bush himself, have said recently that the work of inspecting sites had only just begun.

Of a US central command list of 19 top weapons sites, all but two have been searched already. Another 45 sites searched so far from a list of 68 thought to contain some evidence of banned weapons have also yielded nothing.

"We came to bear country, we came loaded for bear, and we found out the bear wasn't here," an officer with the US defence intelligence agency was quoted as saying.

"Ba'athist Minister Forced Out as Doctors Rebel" -- Rory McCarthy in The Guardian, 5/12/03:

Iraq's newly appointed health minister resigned suddenly yesterday amid mounting criticism over his career as a senior Ba'ath party official.

His departure represents a significant embarrassment for the American authorities who chose him as the first minister in the post-Saddam government. It also brings another costly delay in the already slow reconstruction process.

Iraqi medical sources told the Guardian that Dr Ali Shnan al-Janabi quit yesterday morning and was not likely to be replaced. The health ministry will instead be run by a large committee on which all doctors, nurses and hospital staff are represented. . . .

As the number three at the ministry under Saddam Hussein, Dr Janabi was regarded by doctors as complicit in the appalling corruption and mis management of the decrepit health system. Yet hours before he resigned, senior US officials continued to defend him as a man of "honesty" and "great courage".

Hundreds of doctors and medical staff gathered outside the ministry last week to protest at his appointment. "Clean this corrupted ministry," reads the graffiti on the wall surrounding the building.

Dr Janabi ignored the disapproval over his appointment and on Saturday held day-long meetings with Jay Garner, the retired general appointed to lead the reconstruction of Iraq, and Stephen Browning, a US special adviser to the health ministry.

The minister, along with all the doctors and ministry staff at the meeting, was required to fill out a form renouncing his membership of the Ba'ath party and denouncing it and the Saddam regime.

At a news conference afterwards, Dr Janabi said he was no longer a party member, but he defended it. "I didn't commit a criminal act against humanity or against the children of Iraq," he said. Asked if he would denounce the party, he refused. "You will find a lot of the ideology is very, very good," he said.

"We Stopped Getting Orders from Iraq a Long Time Ago" -- Sophie Arie interviews the crews of two Iraqi navy ships stranded in La Spezia, Italy for the last seventeen years (The Guardian, 5/12/03)

"Yanks Go Home" -- Jonathan Steele in The Guardian, 5/12/03:

The speed with which the US is forfeiting the goodwill it had in Iraq is breathtaking. With the exception of the Kurds, most Iraqis opposed the invasion of their country, and once US troops had succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein without massive casualties or tides of refugees the dominant emotion was relief. Public displays of gratitude were few, but there was widespread satisfaction that the dictator and his regime were gone.

A month later, the mood has changed. Iraqis are staggered that the efficiency of the US fighting machine was not matched by post-conflict competence worthy of a superpower. Overriding everything is the issue of governance. Who is going to run Iraq, and will it be done for the benefit of Iraqis or of outside powers? Some reports suggest that Iraqis do not care who governs them, as long as someone competent ends the chaos soon. That is a false perception. American mismanagement in the first month of occupation has led an increasing number of Iraqis to distrust the whole US enterprise.

Even America's Iraqi friends are having second thoughts. Many Iraqi exiles who were recruited months ago by Washington's Future of Iraq project, to work in Baghdad ministries alongside American "advisers" after regime change, are hesitating to take up their posts for fear of being seen as collaborators.