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NyTimes Downplays Premise That Evidence to Justify Impeachment of Bush is Available.
I offered documentation in a recent thread on "One Party Rule", that house judiciary committee chair James Sensenbrenner, Jr. has all but shut down the investigatory oversight responsibility of the committee, the place where articles of impeachment would be drafted against Bush administration officials.
The question I ask here, is why, in the face of what I offer below, including in the second quote box, reported by Time in April, 2002, combined with the revelation of the "Downing Street Memos", is why is the NY Times helping to discourage a proper reaction to all of the evidence? Why are they discrediting
sentiment in favor of an impeachment investigation against Bush for launching an illegal war in Iraq that is now a disaster, and lying abou the threat to the U.S. that Saddam alledgedly posed, in 2002?
Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...235395,00.html
May 05, 2002
.....Hawks like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Policy Board chief Richard Perle strongly believe that after years of American sanctions and periodic air assaults, the Iraqi leader is weaker than most people believe. Rumsfeld has been so determined to find a rationale for an attack that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to the terror attacks of Sept. 11. The intelligence agency repeatedly came back empty-handed. The best hope for Iraqi ties to the attack — a report that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech Republic — was discredited last week.......
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/po...14downing.html
News Analysis
A Peephole to the War Room: British Documents Shed Light on Bush Team's State of Mind
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: June 14, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 13 - The disclosure of British government memorandums portraying the Bush administration as bent on war with Iraq by the summer of 2002, and insufficiently prepared for post-invasion problems, has caused a political stir on both sides of the Atlantic, in part because opponents of President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair see the documents as proof that both men misled their countries into war.
But the documents are not quite so shocking. Three years ago , the near-unanimous conventional wisdom in Washington held that Mr. Bush was determined to topple Saddam Hussein by any means necessary. Plenty of people - chief among them Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state - were also warning in public and private that the Pentagon was ill prepared for prolonged occupation.
What no one knew then for certain (though some lonely voices did predict it) is that American forces would find none of the lethal chemical or biological weapons that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair said made Iraq so dangerous, or that the anti-American insurgency would be so durable and deadly. That is why the British memos' foresight - read with the benefit of hindsight - rings so bittersweet for those who tried in vain to avert the war, and remain aghast at its human and material costs.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, plans to hold an informational forum about the memos (without Republican participation) on Thursday. Blogs are awash in discussions of the memos, and full of criticism of the mainstream American media for not paying them more mind.
In an interview on Monday, Mr. Conyers said that "it isn't that there wasn't any discussion" of the issues in the memos three years ago, "but it was all being put down, almost uniformly" by administration officials. Now, he added, "unless the British intelligence service can't take accurate notes of a meeting, it was very well understood that this was exactly what was going to happen."
The memos do shed new light on the thinking of senior British officials, and their view of American thinking, in the months before the invasion. At a minimum, they suggest that the Bush administration paid no less (and no more) heed to the concerns of its closest ally than it did to those of its own secretary of state.
But the memos are not the Dead Sea Scrolls. There has been ample evidence for many months, and even years, that top Bush administration figures saw war as inevitable by the summer of 2002. In the March 31, 2003, issue of The New Yorker, with the invasion just under way, Richard N. Haass, then the State Department's director of policy planning, said that in early July 2002 he asked Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, whether it made sense to put Iraq at the center of the agenda, with a global campaign against terrorism already under way. "And she said, essentially, that that decision's been made, don't waste your breath," he said then.
By July 2002, daily newspapers were filled with details of war plans, which had been seeping out since late spring, and internal administration disputes over whether the planning was adequate. In August, Vice President Dick Cheney made a bellicose speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in which he warned that a return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq "would provide no assurance whatsoever" of Mr. Hussein's compliance.
The so-called Downing Street memo, a summary of a prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, does not put forward specific proof that Mr. Bush had taken any particular action, only a general sense that "it seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided." It describes the impression of Britain's chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," but does not elaborate.
Rather, what the memo seems to emphasize is that the United States could build greater support for any military action - especially from Britain - by first confronting Iraq through the United Nations, the course it eventually took at the urging of Mr. Blair and Mr. Powell.
The latest memo published, first in The Washington Post and The Times of London over the weekend, is from July 21, 2002. It warned that "a post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," in which "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
For better or worse, the questions raised anew by the memos are not likely to go away.
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: June 14, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 13 - The disclosure of British government memorandums portraying the Bush administration as bent on war with Iraq by the summer of 2002, and insufficiently prepared for post-invasion problems, has caused a political stir on both sides of the Atlantic, in part because opponents of President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair see the documents as proof that both men misled their countries into war.
Last summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a scathing, unanimous report that "most of the major key judgments" in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's illicit weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."
By prior agreement, the committee focused only on the role played by intelligence agencies, and reserved the question of how policy makers used intelligence for a future study, which is bogged down in internal disputes and competing priorities.
But Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said Monday in a statement, "The committee has an obligation to answer these questions, and the American people deserve answers. Only then can we provide a full and complete accounting of the mistakes leading up to the war in Iraq and what changes are necessary to fix them."
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Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...235395,00.html
..............."We're Taking Him Out"
His war on Iraq may be delayed, but Bush still vows to remove Saddam. Here's a look at White House plans
By DANIEL EISENBERG
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR
Posted Sunday, May. 05, 2002
Two months ago, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators went to the White House to meet with Condoleezza Rice, the President's National Security Adviser. Bush was not scheduled to attend but poked his head in anyway — and soon turned the discussion to Iraq. The President has strong feelings about Saddam Hussein (you might too if the man had tried to assassinate your father, which Saddam attempted to do when former President George Bush visited Kuwait in 1993) and did not try to hide them. He showed little interest in debating what to do about Saddam. Instead, he became notably animated, according to one person in the room, used a vulgar epithet to refer to Saddam and concluded with four words that left no one in doubt about Bush's intentions: "We're taking him out."
Dick Cheney carried the same message to Capitol Hill in late March. The Vice President dropped by a Senate Republican policy lunch soon after his 10-day tour of the Middle East — the one meant to drum up support for a U.S. military strike against Iraq. As everyone in the room well knew, his mission had been thrown off course by the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.<b> But Cheney hadn't lost focus. Before he spoke, he said no one should repeat what he said, and Senators and staff members promptly put down their pens and pencils.</b> Then he gave them some surprising news. The question was no longer if the U.S. would attack Iraq, he said. The only question was when....................
....................A front-page story in the New York Times on April 28 claimed that Bush had all but settled on a full-scale ground invasion of Iraq early next year with between 70,000 and 250,000 U.S. troops. But military and civilian officials insist that there is no finalized battle plan or timetable — and that Bush has not even been presented with a formal list of options. Instead, the Times story, with its vision of a large-scale troop deployment, seems to have been the latest volley in the bureaucratic war at home, leaked by uniformed officers who think some of their civilian overseers have been downplaying the size and difficulty of an attack...................
.................Still, planning for some kind of military action is clearly under way. Earlier this year, Bush signed a supersecret intelligence "finding" that authorized further action to prepare for Saddam's ouster. Mindful of widespread concern that a post-Saddam Iraq could quickly be torn apart by ethnic violence and regional meddling, the White House is increasing its efforts to devise a workable replacement government.........................
....................Invasion is not the only alternative being considered, but it is the most likely. Taking the Afghanistan campaign as their model, many proponents of action, including Senator John McCain, still believe that before the U.S. commits to a full-scale invasion, it's worth trying to overthrow Saddam in a proxy war with the help of a local opposition force much like the Northern Alliance, aided by American special forces and air power.......................
.............Hawks like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Policy Board chief Richard Perle strongly believe that after years of American sanctions and periodic air assaults, the Iraqi leader is weaker than most people believe. Rumsfeld has been so determined to find a rationale for an attack that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to the terror attacks of Sept. 11. The intelligence agency repeatedly came back empty-handed. The best hope for Iraqi ties to the attack — a report that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech Republic — was discredited last week...................
.................f that sounds like another potential Somalia, it's easy to understand why the President, for all his tough talk, is not about to rush into anything. "Bush cannot embark on a mission that fails," says Geoffrey Kemp, a former member of President Reagan's National Security Council now at the Nixon Center in Washington. "Given what happened to his father and the hype in this Administration, it would be the end." And for Saddam, yet another new beginning.
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Quote:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/...mep.saddam.tm/
First Stop, Iraq
By Michael Elliott and James Carney
Monday, March 24, 2003 Posted: 5:49 PM EST (2249 GMT)
How did the U.S. end up taking on Saddam? The inside story of how Iraq jumped to the top of Bush's agenda -- and why the outcome there may foreshadow a different world order
"F___ Saddam. we're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase.
The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room. A year later, Bush's outburst has been translated into action, as cruise missiles and smart bombs slam into Baghdad.
But the apparent simplicity of his message belies the gravity at hand. Sure, the outcome is certain: America will win the war, and Saddam will be taken out. But what is unfolding in Iraq is far bigger than regime change or even the elimination of dangerous weapons.
The U.S. has launched a war unlike any it has fought in the past. This one is being waged not to defend against an enemy that has attacked the U.S. or its interests but to pre-empt the possibility that one day it might do so.......
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Quote:
http://www.maconareaonline.com/news.asp?id=11137
Palast for Conyers: The Other Downing Street 'Memos'
By: Greg Palast
Thur June 16, 2005 7:27 AM ET
MACON,GA.- Greg Palast, unable to attend hearings in Washington Thursday, has submitted the following testimony:
Chairman Conyers,
It's official: The Downing Street memos, a snooty New York Times "News Analysis" informs us, "are not the Dead Sea Scrolls." You are warned, Congressman, to ignore the clear evidence of official mendacity and bald-faced fibbing by our two nations' leaders because the cry for investigation came from the dark and dangerous world of "blogs" and "opponents" of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush.
.......On May 5, "blog" site Buzzflash.com carried my story, IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED," bringing the London Times report of the Downing Street memo to US media which seemed to be suffering at the time from an attack of NADD -- "news attention deficit disorder."
The memo, which contains the ill-making admission that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed" to match the Iraq-crazed fantasies of our President, is sufficient basis for a hearing toward impeachment of the Chief Executive. But to that we must add the other evidence and secret memos and documents still hidden from the American public. ........
......On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained,
"It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime."
March 2001 - Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq. Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose. Harper's has since learned their plan and purpose -- see below.
October/November 2001 - An easy military victory in Afghanistan emboldens then-Dep. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to convince the Administration to junk the State Department "coup" plan in favor of an invasion and occupation that could remake the economy of Iraq. And elaborate plan, ultimately summarized in a 101-page document, scopes out the "sale of all state enterprises" -- that is, most of the nation's assets, ". especially in the oil and supporting industries."
2002 - Grover Norquist and other corporate lobbyists meet secretly with Defense, State and Treasury officials to ensure the invasion plans for Iraq include plans for protecting "property rights." The result was a pre-invasion scheme to sell off Iraq's oil fields, banks, electric systems, and even change the country's copyright laws to the benefit of the lobbyists' clients. Occupation chief Paul Bremer would later order these giveaways into Iraq law.
Fall 2002 - Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, is brought in by the Pentagon to plan the management of Iraq's oil fields. He works directly with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. "There were plans," says Carroll, "maybe even too many plans" -- but none disclosed to the public nor even the US Congress.
January 2003 - Robert Ebel, former CIA oil analyst, is sent, BBC learns, to London to meet with Fadhil Chalabi to plan terms for taking over Iraq's oil.
March 2003 - What White House spokesman Ari Fleisher calls "Operations Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) begins. (Invasion is re-christened "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom.)
March 2003 - Defense Department is told in confidence by US Energy Information Administrator Guy Caruso that Iraq's fields are incapable of a massive increase in output. Despite this intelligence, Dep. Secretary Wolfowitz testifies to Congress that invasion will be a free ride. He swears, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. .We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," a deliberate fabrication promoted by the Administration, an insider told BBC, as "part of the sales pitch" for war.
May 2003 - General Jay Garner, appointed by Bush as viceroy over Iraq, is fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The general revealed in an interview for BBC that he resisted White House plans to sell off Iraq's oil and national assets.
"That's just one fight you don't want to take on," Garner told me. But apparently, the White House wanted that fight.
The general also disclosed that these invade-and-grab plans were developed long before the US asserted that Saddam still held WDM:
"All I can tell you is the plans were pretty elaborate; they didn't start them in 2002, they were started in 2001."
November/December 2003 - Secrecy and misinformation continues even after the invasion. The oil industry objects to the State Department plans for Iraq's oil fields and drafts for the Administration a 323-page plan, "Options for [the] Iraqi Oil Industry." Per the industry plan, the US forces Iraq to create an OPEC-friendly state oil company that supports the OPEC cartel's extortionate price for petroleum.
The Stone Wall
Harper's and BBC obtained the plans despite official denial of their existence, then footdragging when confronted with the evidence of the reports' existence.
Still today, the State and Defense Departments and White House continue to stonewall our demands for the notes of the meetings between lobbyists, oil industry consultants and key Administration officials that would reveal the hidden economic motives for the war.
What are the secret interests behind this occupation? Who benefits? Who met with whom? Why won't this Administration release these documents of the economic blueprint for the war?
To date, the State and Defense Department responses to our reports are risible, and their answers to our requests for documents run from evasive to downright misleading. Maybe Congress, with it's power of subpoena, can do better.
Blogs, the Media and Democracy
Let me conclude with a comment about those pesky "blogs" that so bother the New York Times. We should stand and offer a moment of quiet gratitude to the electronic swarm of gadfly commentators who make it so much harder for the US media to ignore news not officially blessed. Yes, Judith Miller's breathless reports for The Times that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction may have maintained "access" for the mainstream press to its diet of White House propaganda, but the blogs insure that, whatever nonsense the US press is biting on, the public need not swallow
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