Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq

.....Mr. Tenet largely endorses the view of administration critics that Mr. Cheney and a handful of Pentagon officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late 2001 and 2002 even as Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. concentrated mostly on Al Qaeda.

Mr. Tenet describes helping to kill a planned speech by Mr. Cheney on the eve of the invasion because its claims of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq went “way beyond what the intelligence shows.”

“Mr. President, we cannot support the speech and it should not be given,” Mr. Tenet wrote that he told Mr. Bush. Mr. Cheney never delivered the remarks.

Mr. Tenet hints at some score-settling in the book. He describes in particular the extraordinary tension between him and Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, in internal debate over how the president came to say erroneously in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.

He describes an episode in 2003, shortly after he issued a statement taking partial responsibility for that error. He said he was invited over for a Sunday afternoon, back-patio lemonade by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state. Mr. Powell described what Mr. Tenet called “a lively debate” on Air Force One a few days before about whether the White House should continue to support Mr. Tenet as C.I.A. director.

“In the end, the president said yes, and said so publicly,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “But Colin let me know that other officials, particularly the vice president, had quite another view.”

He writes that the controversy over who was to blame for the State of the Union error was the beginning of the end of his tenure. After the finger-pointing between the White House and the C.I.A., he wrote, “My relationship with the administration was forever changed.”

COVER-UP OF TILLMAN AND LYNCH INCIDENTS AT HIGHEST LEVELS

Ranger Alleges Cover-Up in Tillman Death
Tillman Family, Lynch Address House Panel
By SCOTT LINDLAW and ERICA WERNER
AP
WASHINGTON (April 24) - An Army Ranger who was with Pat Tillman when he died by friendly fire said Tuesday he was told by a higher-up to conceal that information from Tillman's family. "I was ordered not to tell them," U.S. Army Specialist Bryan O'Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

He said he was given the order by then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey, the battalion commander who oversaw Tillman's platoon. Pat Tillman's brother Kevin was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened, but didn't see it. O'Neal said Bailey told him specifically not to tell Kevin Tillman that the death was friendly fire rather than heroic engagement with the enemy. "He basically just said, 'Do not let Kevin know, he's probably in a bad place knowing that his brother's dead,'" O'Neal said. He added that Bailey made clear he would "get in trouble" if he told. Kevin Tillman was not in the hearing room when O'Neal spoke.

In earlier testimony, Kevin Tillman accused the military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.

There was additional testimony from Jessica Lynch, then an Army private, who was badly injured when her convoy was ambushed in Iraq. She was subsequently rescued by American troops from an Iraqi hospital but the tale of her ambush was changed into a story of heroism on her part. Still hampered by her injuries, Lynch walked slowly to the witness table and took a seat alongside Tillman's family members. "The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales," Lynch said.

54.433 CASUALTIES AND BLOGGER CHALLENGES "HOPELESSLY MISBEGOTTEN POLITICAL" STRATEGY

Home
US Iraq casualties rise to 54,433
Media
By Michael Munk
US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 169 combat casulties in the week ending April 24, as total casualties reached at least 54,433.

Empire Notes concludes his weekly blog commentary today:

even if it (The United States) had the best intentions in the world, there is almost certainly nothing that it can do about that fragmentation now. Instead, it should limit itself to learning one of the key lessons from Vietnam: if your enterprise is hopelessly misbegotten politically, it cannot be saved by technical fixes.

The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism: Mahajan's newest book

Rahul Mahajan is a student at the University of Texas, Austin

Lee Iaccoca Has Had Enough

Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?: order it

http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=wherehavealltheleadersgone: read it

CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP

....President Bush has warmed to strategies and ideas he once rejected to turn around the violence and chaos in Iraq - such as sending thousands more troops to the country in an effort to calm Baghdad. His new crop of Iraq leaders bypasses ideologues and loyalists in favor of professionals with previous experience in Iraq and war zones.

"None of them are particularly ideological or were associated with the original public push for the war," said Kurt Campbell, chief executive officer of the nonpartisan, centrist Center for a New American Security. The new leaders "are probably quietly appalled that we find ourselves in the situation that we do in Iraq," Campbell said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17351284/ Olbermann: Condi's inaccurate historical comparison (SEE IT)

Baghdad Burning reports that: 'The World Health Organisation reported on Tuesday that Iraq’s hospitals are so dysfunctional that “70 percent of all critically injured patients with violence-related wounds die in emergency and intensive care units due to a shortage of competent staff and a lack of drugs and equipment”.'

ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS LOOTED THE US AND IRAQ TREASURIES: ETHICAL MALFEASANCE

When Bremer Ruled Baghdad

When President Bush announced "Mission Accomplished," and the end of the war in May 2003, he also said we would help the citizens of Iraq rebuild their country. "Now that the dictator's gone," he stated, "we and our coalition partners are helping Iraqis to lay the foundations of a free economy."

....Bremer granted himself the authority to run the government ministries, appoint Iraqi officials and award contracts for reconstruction. Next he fired 500,000 Iraqis, most of them soldiers, but pink slips also went out to many doctors, nurses, teachers and other public employees as well.

For the most part, the CPA financed its activities with billions of dollars that belonged to the Iraqis. On May 22, 2003, a UN Security Council passed a resolution that directed the proceeds from Iraqi oil to be placed in a Development Fund for Iraq, and the CPA was granted authority to control the fund and decide which profiteers would get contracts. During the year that Bremer controlled the purse strings, the Iraqi Development Fund received $20.2 billion, including $8.1 billion from the UN's oil-for-food program, $10.8 billion from Iraqi oil, and the rest from repatriated funds, vested assets and donations.

The CPA accounting system was cash and carry and a steady stream of cash was flown into Bagdad from the US. Inspector General, Stuart Bowen later said that he knew of one $2 billion flight. A report released by the House Government Reform Committee in February 2007, shows that in the 13 months that Bremer ruled, from May 2003 to June 2004, the Federal Reserve Bank in New York shipped nearly $12 billion in a cash to Iraq. One can only imagine the Bank service charges associated with these shipments because to accomplish this feat, according to the Democratic chairman of the Reform Committee, Henry Waxman, the cash weighed 363 tons and the Bank had to count and pack 281 million individual bills, including more than 107 million $100 bills, and then load them onto wooden pallets to be shipped to Bagdad on C-130 cargo planes.

....In June 2004, the Government Accounting Office estimated that more than $1 billion in had been wasted due to illegal overcharges by contractors since the war began. A later audit by the Iraqi government found that as much as $1.27 billion was lost to accounting irregularities between June 2004 and February 2005.

....Not surprisingly, Cheney's Halliburton remained the top profiteer under Bremer's rule. A July 23, 2004, audit conducted by Bowen, showed the company had received 60% of all contracts paid for with Iraq money, including 5 no-bid contracts worth $222 million, $325 million, $180 million, and the last 2 together totaled $194 million for the last two. In comparison, the audit showed that the CPA awarded only 2% of the reconstruction contracts to Iraqi companies. In one example of blatant fraud, an audit found that Halliburton was charging for more than 41,000 meals a day for soldiers when only about 14,000 were served.

....Senator Robert Byrd said he was outraged over the inability to monitor CPA spending. "There is no reason why any arm of the executive branch charged with making such significant spending decisions," he said, "should not be working directly with Congress." "Former Bush Administration officials," he warned fellow Senators, "are even setting up consulting firms to act as middlemen for contractors hoping to take part in the bonanza." "Are we turning the U.S. Treasury into a grab bag for favorite campaign contributors to be financed at taxpayer expense?" he asked.

The answer was yes, and what a grab bag it was. Media reports revealed that Bush's ex-campaign manager and Feith's former law partner had set up consulting firms to profit off the war by lining up contracts for clients through their partners in crime within the CPA. Other reports revealed that contracts worth $407 were awarded to a firm called Nour that was formed less than 2 months after the war began. The names linked to the profits from Nour, among many others, included former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, Ahmad Chalabi via a $2 million kickback, his nephew Salam Chalabi as the attorney handling the deal, and the money trail even led to the First Brothers, Marvin and Jeb Bush. But come to find out, Doug Feith the ringleader on the ground in Washington, had awarded a batch of no-bid contracts to a favored company the month before the war began for the purpose of controlling the media in post-war Iraq.

The favored companies enjoyed a fraud-free-all. For instance, Halliburton said it had lost over $60 million worth of government property including trucks, office furniture and computers. Inspector Bowen reported that 6,975 items valued at $61.1 million were lost, and in June 2005, the Defense Contract Audit Agency reported that the Halliburton had overcharged or presented questionable bills for close to $1.5 billion.
In the end, Bowen's audit concluded that "the CPA's internal controls for approximately $8.8 billion in DFI funds disbursed to Iraqi ministries through the national budget process failed to provide sufficient accountability for the use of those funds."

As of February 2007, according to Bowen, audits of the CPA have resulted in 300 criminal and civil investigations, 5 arrests and convictions, and another 23 cases are currently under prosecution at the DOJ, and he is working on 76 on-going investigations. One of the convictions involved Robert Stein, a former CPA comptroller and funding officer, who recently pleaded guilty to 5 felony counts including conspiracy, money laundering, and bribery in stealing more than $2 million of reconstruction funds and taking more than $1 million in kickbacks to rig the bids on contracts that exceeded $8 million.

....The whistleblower case against Custer Battle went to trial and a jury found that Custer had committed 37 acts of fraud and filed $3 million in false claims, and rendered a verdict with a $10 million penalty. However, the verdict was overturned by Republican appointed US District Court Judge TS Ellis III, who ruled that the CPA was not a US entity and therefore the false claims act does not apply to it. In the ruling, the judge said Custer's accusers "failed to prove that the U.S. government was ever defrauded. Any fraud that occurred was perpetrated instead against the Coalition Provisional Authority, formed to run Iraq until a government was established."

Legal experts say this ruling is great news for the CPA and contractors because from now on anyone charged with any act of fraud related to the Iraqi money doled out by the CPA in Bagdad will use it in attempt to avoid civil or criminal prosecution.
Evelyn Pringle can be reached at: evelyn-pringle@sbcglobal.net

BILL MOYERS SLAMS MEDIA'S PRE-WAR COVERAGE

Next week, PBS welcomes the triumphant return of "Bill Moyers Journal" with a 90-minute documentary "Buying the War," a sharp indictment of the media's coverage of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Bill Moyers returns to PBS Wednesday night with a smackdown of the media performance leading to the Iraq war

Greg Mitchell at E&P got his hands on an advance copy, and rates the program highly:
"While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility."

Mitchell also lists some statistics Moyers cites in the show:
Number of William Safire op-eds "fanning the sparks of war" in the year before the invasion: 27
Number of front-page Washington Post stories during the same period that made the Administration's case for war: 140
Number of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on CBS, NBC, and ABC in the six months prior to the war traced back solely to a White House source: Nearly all of them

ANOTHER NOT SO HUMOROUS SIDE OF JOHN MCCAIN?

In response to an audience question about military action against Iran, the Arizona senator briefly sang the chorus of the surf-rocker classic "Barbara Ann."

"That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran," he said in jest Wednesday, chuckling with the crowd. Then, he softly sang to the melody: "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ..." The audience responded with more laughter.

His quip was prompted by a man in the audience who asked: "How many times do we have to prove that these people are blowing up people now, nevermind if they get a nuclear weapon, when do we send 'em an airmail message to Tehran?"

My thoughts: Sounds like PTSD to me. Dissociating likely, decompensating from the pressures of his Iraq stance and endorsement of Bush policies.

UPDATED IRAQ MAP (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE) and UPDATED BAGHDAD MAP

2 MILLION INTERNALLY DISPLACED IRAQIS: STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE OF SECRETARY GENERAL OF UN

(There are) almost 2 million internally displaced Iraqis, of whom over 700,000 have been displaced in the past 14 months. Reports indicate that internal displacement is continuing and, unless peace and stability are restored soon, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) will likely increase.

People are leaving their homes because of the violence in Iraq and while many have sought safety in neighboring countries – as is their right under international law many are unwilling or unable to leave their country. Although systematic data are lacking, it is likely that those who are internally displaced are even more vulnerable than refugees: IDPs are closer to the conflict which led to their displacement and the provision of humanitarian assistance inside Iraq is extremely difficult.

BOMBS KILL 178 IN BAGHDAD TODAY

Iraqi men evacuate a burned body from the site of a car bomb explosion at Baghdad's al-Sadriyah neighborhood.

NEWEST STATISTIC: OVER 190 KILLED

BAGHDAD (AP) - April 18, 2007 - Four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 178 people and wounding scores - the deadliest day in the city since the start of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital two months ago.

WAS JUST A "SCHOOL OF TERROR", BUT NOW A "UNIVERSITY"

Qaeda Group Says Iraq A “University of Terror” Developing its own Quds-1 Rocket?

THE POLITICAL BATTLE IN IRAQ:

The stakes are immense. The political battle is about control. Each Shiite party wants power in Baghdad, the so-called mid-Euphrates provinces, Najaf and Karbala, which are home to Shiite Islam's holiest sites, and the southern province Basra with its vital oil resources and maritime facilities.

"The only thing that [the parties] agree on is remaining in power and confronting one another. There is a negative meeting point, and that's not enough to build a government," says Mr. Dawod.
More than two years since their ascent to the helm for the first time in Iraq's modern history, Shiites have proven that the UIA is little more than a pragmatic marriage of convenience. So far, they have failed to transcend differences and reach out to the country's other communities, mainly the embattled Sunni Arabs.

"There is a great failure by the government," says Dawod. "And unfortunately, because of the situation in Iraq now, this failure does not lead to an alternative government coming to power but more chaos."

But Faleh Jabar, another Iraq expert, says he believes Maliki, who is under tremendous pressure from Washington to deliver on a number of benchmarks that are primarily aimed at promoting reconciliation and resuscitating the economy, may survive the withdrawal of the Sadrists. They held six cabinet posts: health, transport, agriculture, tourism, civil society, and provincial affairs.

"It's possible if the Kurds and [SCIRI] go on supporting him," says Mr. Jabar, director of the Beirut-based Iraqi Institute for Strategic Studies. "And if the Sunnis feel that Maliki is dealing with security in a fair-handed manner."

Jabar explains that more Sunnis could gravitate toward Maliki if they genuinely feel that he is targeting militias implicated in sectarian killing, namely Sadr's Mahdi Army.

By Sam Dagher, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BREAKING THE HEARTS AND INSULTING THE MIND OF THE IRAQI PEOPLE:

http://empirenotes.org/abuhanifa.html

Issam Rashid, chief of security for the mosque, told us the story. At 3:30 am on Sunday morning, 100 American troops raided the mosque, looking for weapons and resistance fighters. They started the raid the way they virtually always do -- by smashing in the gates with tanks and then driving Hummers in. The Hummers ran over and destroyed some of the stored relief goods (the bulk of the goods had already been sent to Fallujah -- over 200 tons -- but the amount remaining was considerable). More was destroyed as soldiers ripped apart sacks looking for rifles. Rashid estimated maybe three tons of supplies were destroyed. We saw for ourselves some of the remains, sacks of beans ripped apart and strewn around.

The mosque was full of people, including 90 down from Kirkuk with the Red Crescent, arranging for further aid to Fallujah. They were all pushed down on the floor, with guns put to the backs of their heads. Another person associated with the mosque, Mr. Alber, who speaks very good English, told us that he repeatedly said, "Please, don't break down doors. Please, don't break windows. We can help you. We can have custodians unlock the doors." (Alber, by the way, was imprisoned by Saddam for running a bakery. As he said, "Under the embargo, you could eat flour, you could eat sugar, you could eat eggs, all separately. But mix them together and bake them and you were harming the economy by raising the price of sugar and you could get 15 years in prison.)

The Americans refused to listen to Alber's pleas. We went all around the mosque and the adjacent madrassah, the Imam Aadham Islamic College. We saw dozens of doors broken down, windows broken, ceilings ripped apart, and bullet holes in walls and ceilings. The way the soldiers searched for illicit arms in the ceiling was first to spray the ceiling with gunfire, then break out a panel and go up and search.

They even went and rifled through students' exam papers. A feeble old man with a limp who is a "guard" at the mosque (actually a poor man with a large family who is given housing by the imam of the mosque) was hit in the head with a rifle butt and then kicked when he was down -- all because he was a little slow in answering the door. He says he never carries a weapon -- the whole mosque has only three Kalashnikovs, for security, kept in the imam's room (the soldiers confiscated their ammunition in the raid). And, of course, they entered the mosque with their boots on.

The American commanders will say this was a necessary precaution to make sure no military goods got into Fallujah and that this was legal under the laws of war. But the Abu Hanifa mosque was not involved in any illicit activities – nothing was found. The soldiers didn't bother to ask. They didn't go to the Imam and see if they could search to mosque. And, after a year of being stationed in Aadhamiyah, they didn't know the people well enough to know there would be nothing -- even though they were told repeatedly that the resistance in that area never fired from near the mosque because they were afraid of drawing return fire that would hit the mosque.

You can guess how many hearts and minds were won by this little operation -- the third time that the mosque has been raided since the war.

Abu Hanifa mosque has a tower that is being reconstructed. It was destroyed by the American attack during the war and is only now being finished, one year later. Rashid told me why. He said, "After the war, the Americans came and offered money to rebuild the tower. We told them no. We will rebuild the tower with our own money. We will take no money from you. You can't just destroy things and then win our goodwill by paying us off. This is not a game."

Administration Loosens Iraq Refugee Requirements

The Bush Administration is sending to Congress draft special immigrant visa (SIV) legislation, Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky announced today in Geneva at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' international conference on Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons.

She is pictured here at the announcement with Ellen Sauerbrey

US announces USD 18 million, Iraq USD 25 million GENEVA, April 17 (KUNA) -- US Under-Secretary of State Paaula Dobriansky announced today that her government expects in 2007 to provide USD 100 million in humanitarian assistance for Iraqis, both inside and outside Iraq.

She added, in a news conference today, that the US will also contribute USD 18 million to the United Nations High Commissioner (UNHCR) emergency appeal for Iraqi displacement.

Dobriansky added that the US might be able to take this year for resettlement some 25,000 Iraqi asylum seeker. The US official in charge of Democracy and Global affairs said that the US is taking into consideration the plight of 40,000 third-country refugees still living in Iraq among them 15,000 Palestinians. Dobriansky said it is the responsibility of the Iraqi government and UNHCR to protect those refugees.

NOTE: For a number of years the refugee program for Iraqis citizens has severely limited approval to immigrate to the United States. Since April 2003 only 690 Iraqis have been admitted, and have been under close scrutiny by State Department officials. They have had to be interviewed outside the US Embassy and military officers have often been required to provide extensive documentation in their behalf. As the Congress has come under Democratic supervision there has been an effort to open up refugee doors to the US. See:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041607J.shtml

CAN WE EVER BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAY?

New email reveal holes in Attorney General's story...

A recently released email from the Justice Department appears to conflict with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' assertion that he was uninvolved in the firing of 8 US attorneys last December, reports ABC News...

Also, in a closed door meeting with congressional investigators over the weekend, Sampson told senators that President George Bush went to Gonzales in October to notify him of complaints regarding fired New Mexico attorney David Iglesias, according to the Associated Press.

....RAW STORY reported yesterday on an Albuquerque Journal article that alleged that Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) complained to Bush.

"During a phone call with reporters on Monday, [New York Senator Chuck] Schumer said Sampson's statement contradicts what Gonzales has said previously about the firings," continued the AP.