Wednesday, May 11, 2005
More evidence that Bush lied about the Iraq war.
O.k. so let me get this staight. The British say Bush was fixing facts in order to justify war with Iraq in 2002. Bush said at the same time that he would only pursue war as a last resort. Douglas Feith admits that the U.S. was planning for postwar Iraq at the same time they were publicly pronouncing they would seek a diplomatic solution.
How does all this not make Bush a liar?
From FAIR
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2511
A leaked document that appeared in a British newspaper offered clear new evidence that U.S. intelligence was shaped to support the drive for war. Though the information rocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign when it was revealed, it has received little attention in the U.S. press.
The document, first revealed by the London Times (5/1/05), was the minutes of a July 23, 2002 meeting in Blair's office with the prime minister's close advisors. The meeting was held to discuss Bush administration policy on Iraq, and the likelihood that Britain would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the minutes state.
The minutes also recount a visit to Washington by Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence service MI6: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
That last sentence is striking, to say the least, suggesting that the policy of invading Iraq was determining what the Bush administration was presenting as "facts" derived from intelligence. But it has provoked little media follow-up in the United States. The most widely circulated story in the mainstream press came from the Knight Ridder wire service (5/6/05), which quoted an anonymous U.S. official saying the memo was ''an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during Dearlove's meetings in Washington.
From the New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050509fa_fact
Douglas J. Feith, who is the UnderSecretary of Defense for Policy, created two new units within his policy shop: the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. Special Plans was the name given to a new subregional office focussed on Iraq. The Ian Fleming-like label was chosen, Feith said, to obscure its mission; at the time, the Bush Administration was publicly pursuing a diplomatic solution to the Iraq crisis, and the Pentagon did not want to advertise that it was engaged in planning for postwar Iraq. The eighteen members of the Special Plans staff prepared strategies on a range of issues that America would face after an invasion: repairing Iraq’s economy and oil industry, the training of a new police force, war-crimes trials, the reorganization of the Iraqi government. The State Department, meanwhile, named its own planning program in a more straightforward way: its Future of Iraq project was also a study of problems anticipated in postwar Iraq.
*****
How does all this not make Bush a liar?
From FAIR
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2511
A leaked document that appeared in a British newspaper offered clear new evidence that U.S. intelligence was shaped to support the drive for war. Though the information rocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign when it was revealed, it has received little attention in the U.S. press.
The document, first revealed by the London Times (5/1/05), was the minutes of a July 23, 2002 meeting in Blair's office with the prime minister's close advisors. The meeting was held to discuss Bush administration policy on Iraq, and the likelihood that Britain would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the minutes state.
The minutes also recount a visit to Washington by Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence service MI6: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
That last sentence is striking, to say the least, suggesting that the policy of invading Iraq was determining what the Bush administration was presenting as "facts" derived from intelligence. But it has provoked little media follow-up in the United States. The most widely circulated story in the mainstream press came from the Knight Ridder wire service (5/6/05), which quoted an anonymous U.S. official saying the memo was ''an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during Dearlove's meetings in Washington.
From the New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050509fa_fact
Douglas J. Feith, who is the UnderSecretary of Defense for Policy, created two new units within his policy shop: the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. Special Plans was the name given to a new subregional office focussed on Iraq. The Ian Fleming-like label was chosen, Feith said, to obscure its mission; at the time, the Bush Administration was publicly pursuing a diplomatic solution to the Iraq crisis, and the Pentagon did not want to advertise that it was engaged in planning for postwar Iraq. The eighteen members of the Special Plans staff prepared strategies on a range of issues that America would face after an invasion: repairing Iraq’s economy and oil industry, the training of a new police force, war-crimes trials, the reorganization of the Iraqi government. The State Department, meanwhile, named its own planning program in a more straightforward way: its Future of Iraq project was also a study of problems anticipated in postwar Iraq.
*****
# posted by The Punisher @ Wednesday, May 11, 2005 
