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Ever since I started writing, a long long time ago, I have dreamed of writing something that will change the world for the better. I'm talking about that one swift stroke, that perfect turn of phrase, that home run swing, that peal of thunder that shakes the very ground. Some people dream about winning the Super Bowl. I dreamed about this. I feel like maybe, just maybe, I'm close with this below. Help me out - did I miss anything? Do I need to add anything? Is this the story?
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There was a picture on the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday, July 8. It showed several American soldiers in Iraq sitting in utter dejection as they were informed by their battalion commander that none of them were going home anytime soon, and no one knew exactly when they were going home at all. PFC Harrison Grimes sat in the center of this photo with his chin in his hand, staring at ground that was thousands of miles from his family and friends. A soldier caught in the picture just over PFC Grimes’ shoulder had a look on his face that could break rocks.
Very nearly two hundred of PFC Grimes’ fellow soldiers have died in Iraq, and many more have been wounded. The war created chaos in the cities, and it seems clear now that very little in the way of preparation was made to address the fact that invasion leads to social bedlam, not to mention a lot of shooting. Last Sunday, CNN’s Judy Woodruff showed a clip of a Sergeant Charles Pollard, who said, “All we are here is potential people to be killed and sitting ducks."
According to the numbers, almost two thirds of the soldiers killed in Iraq since May 1 died in “non-combat related” mishaps like accidental weapons discharges, accidental detonations of unexploded ordnance, and car crashes. There are some in the world who might take comfort from the fact that only one third of the dead since May came from snipers or bombs or rocket-propelled grenades. Dead is dead, however. There is no comforting them.
A significant portion of the dead and wounded came after Bush performed his triumphant swagger across the deck of an aircraft carrier that was parked in San Diego bay. Those dead and wounded came because the Bush administration’s shoddy planning for this whole event left the troopers on the firing line wide open to the slow and debilitating bloodletting they have endured. A significant portion of the dead and wounded came after Bush stuck his beady chin out on national television and said, “Bring ‘em on!”
Mission Accomplished. Remember that big banner?
I got slaughtered when I took the LSATs, so my legal wisdom may be a tad creaky. This, though, strikes me as a crime. When a leader sends troops out into the field of battle, they become his responsibility. When his war planning is revealed to be profoundly faulty, flawed in ways that are getting men killed, he should not stick his banty rooster chest out to the cameras and speak with the hollow bravado of a man who knows he is several time zones away from the violence and bloodshed.
If it is a crime, it is only one within many.
Bush and the White House told the American people over and over again that Iraq was in possession of vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Bush and the White House told the American people over and over again that Iraq was directly connected to al Qaeda terrorism, and would hand those terrible weapons over to the terrorists the first chance they got. Bush and the White House told Congress the same thing. Very deliberately, Bush and the White House tied a war in Iraq to the attack of September 11.
It was all a lie. All of it.
When George W. Bush delivered his constitutionally-mandated State of the Union Address in January 2003, he stated flatly that Iraq was attempting to develop a nuclear weapons program through the procurement of significant portions of uranium from the African nation of Niger. CIA Director George Tenet made this same claim in a briefing to a Senate Intelligence Committee on September 24, 2002. This briefing was the deciding factor for a number of Senatorial fence-sitters unsure about voting for war. Bush, in a speech delivered on the eve of the Congressional vote for war on Iraq, referenced the Niger uranium claims again when he raised the specter of a “mushroom cloud” just three sentences after evoking “The horror of September 11.”
That sealed the deal. Congress voted for war, and a clear majority of the people supported the President.
A CIA advisor named Terrance J. Wilkinson has turned all of that on its head. Wilkinson was present at two separate pre-war White House briefings where the Niger claims were raised and discussed. George W. Bush was present at both of these briefings, and was told both times that the intelligence on the Niger uranium was unreliable.
The evidence was, in fact, a set of crudely forged documents first analyzed in February 2002 by US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been dispatched to Niger by Dick Cheney himself. "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place," Wilson was quoted as saying in the Times about an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium.
In other words, the evidence to support an Iraqi nuclear program was utterly worthless. Bush was told this on two separate occasions. "The report had already been discredited," said CIA advisor Wilkinson. "This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings." Bush’s response to this, according to Wilkinson, was to become furious.
"He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," Wilkinson said. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country."
Wilkinson could have saved his breath, and Wilson could have saved himself a trip, if Bush had bothered to pay any attention to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA’s chief spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky, said on September 26, 2002 that no such evidence existed to support claims of a nascent Iraqi nuclear program. Gwozdecky was responding at the time to statements made by both Bush and Blair, who claimed Iraq was close to having the bomb. This was the first time the forged Niger documents were used to justify war.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on July 8 stood before the press corps and said the President’s statements during the State of the Union address had been “incorrect.”
When Bush was twice told the evidence he wanted against Iraq was fake, he got angry and demanded that the CIA find an analyst who would tell him what he wanted to hear. After learning that his Niger evidence was a forgery, he stood before the American people and told them it was fact. He sent the Director of the CIA to the Senate under orders to use the same worthless evidence to cajole that body into war. That is not being “incorrect.”
That is lying. In the context of his position as President, and surrounded by hundreds of dead American soldiers piled alongside thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, that is a crime.
They know it, too.
A report hit the Reuters wires late Tuesday night announcing the arrest of an Iraqi intelligence official named Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. An unnamed “US official” claimed al-Ani had reportedly met with 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in Prague just months before the attack. The old saw about Iraq working fist in glove with al Qaeda to bring about September 11 was back in the news.
According to the story, neither the CIA or the FBI could confirm this meeting had taken place. In fact, a Newsweek report from June 9 entitled “Where are the WMDs?” shows the FBI was completely sure such a meeting had never taken place. The snippet below is from the Newsweek article; the ‘Cabal’ statement refers to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his coterie of hawks who have been all-out for war on Iraq since 1997:
“The Cabal was eager to find a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, especially proof that Saddam played a role in the 9-11 attacks. The hard-liners at Defense seized on a report that Muhammad Atta, the chief hijacker, met in Prague in early April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence official. Only one problem with that story, the FBI pointed out. Atta was traveling at the time between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va. (The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts.)”
Amid the accusations that have exploded surrounding the revelations of Wilson, Wilkinson and other high-ranking intelligence officials, comes now again reports of the infamous Iraq-al Qaeda connection, an administration claim meant to justify the war. As with the Niger forgery, however, it is too easily revealed to be utterly phony.
It reeks of desperation. This administration is learning a lesson that came to Presidents Nixon and Johnson with bitter tears: Scapegoat the CIA at your mortal peril.
There are many who believe that blaming George W. Bush for the errors and gross behavior of his administration is tantamount to blaming Mickey Mouse for mistakes made by Disney. There is a great deal of truth to this. Groups like Rumsfeld’s ‘Cabal,’ and the right-wing think tanks so closely associated to the creation of administration foreign policy, are very much more in control of matters than Bush.
Yet Bush heard the facts of the matter and brushed them angrily aside, demanding that the facts be bent to fit his desires. He allowed CIA Director Tenet to lie to Congress with his bare face hanging out in order to get that body to vote for war. He knew the facts and lied himself, on countless occasions, to an American people who have been, to date, almost slavishly supporting him, even as he beats them over the head with the image of collapsing towers and massive death to stoke their fear and dread. He did all these things, and got his war, and thousands more are dead.
My LSAT scores may have been crummy, but I damned well know a criminal when I see one.
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