....Led by Feith, the group's members also included Larry Franklin, who pleaded guilty to leaking classified documents regarding Iran to a Washington-based Israeli lobby in 2005; prominent neoconservative and Iran-Contra intermediary Michael Ledeen; and Middle East expert Harold Rhode, who purportedly sought to purge the Pentagon of anyone opposing the group’s hawkish Iraq agenda.....
While the US intelligence community struggled to check a hawkish Executive Branch set on going to war, the OSP funneled questionable information directly to the White House, bypassing standard channels and operational procedures and deploying its own “off book teams” into the region without notifying special forces already on the ground.
ADDENDUM: LIES AND MORE LIES: HERE'S MORE FROM A FOLLOW UP INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS FEITH BY CHRIS WALLACE ON FEBRUARY 18, 2007
Chris Wallace: Now a followup to our interview last Sunday with former Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith. Many of you wrote in asking us to check out Feith's claim that he's being unfairly accused of hyping the threat from Saddam Hussein. First, here's what he said to us.
Douglas Feith: Nobody in my office ever said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. It's just not correct. I mean, words matter.
Wallace: But it turns out he did make that case in a memo he sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October of '03. The Weekly Standard, who saw the Feith memo, described it this way: 'Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda.' Later, Vice President Cheney said the article was the best source of information on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection.
Douglas Feith: Nobody in my office ever said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. It's just not correct. I mean, words matter.
Wallace: But it turns out he did make that case in a memo he sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October of '03. The Weekly Standard, who saw the Feith memo, described it this way: 'Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda.' Later, Vice President Cheney said the article was the best source of information on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection.
No comments:
Post a Comment