Jack Pott
09-14-2006, 01:47 PM
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was established in 1997 with the goal of promoting "American global leadership". Prior to Bush being elected president, several PNAC members (such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) stated that an invasion of Iraq is part of a larger Middle East policy.
In September 2000, the PNAC issued a report entitled entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century". The document stated that: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Here's the document:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/Re...asDefenses.pdf
Here's more info about the PNAC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC
http://www.newamericancentury.org/st...principles.htm
In August 2002, the White House created "The White House Iraq Group" (WHIG). WHIG was the marketing arm of the Republican Party whose purpose was to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the public. The task force was set up by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and chaired by Karl Rove to coordinate all the executive branch elements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. One example of the WHIG's functions and influence is the escalation of rhetoric about the danger that Iraq posed to the US, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud". Here's info about WHIG:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...use_Iraq_Group
In September 2002, the Bush administration created an agency called Office of Special Plans (OSP). Seymour Hersh wrote that, according to an unnamed Pentagon adviser, "OSP was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States." Here's Hersh's article:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/conten.../030512fa_fact
Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon, said the OSP manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists: "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." Here are two articles by Kwiatkowski:
http://amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html
http://archive.salon.com/opinion/fea.../index_np.html
The allegations concerning the OSP are supported by an annexe to the first part of Senate Intelligence Committee's Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq published in July 2004. The review, which was highly critical of the CIA's Iraq intelligence generally but found its judgments were right on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, suggests that the OSP sought to discredit and cast doubt on CIA analysis in an effort to establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorism.
Here's more info about the OSP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...999737,00.html
Much of the pre-war information came from The Iraqi National Congress. The INC was an umbrella Iraqi opposition group led by Ahmad Chalabi, who is said to have had political contacts within the PNAC, most notably with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Before the war, the CIA was largely skeptical of Chalabi and the INC. In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the Bush administration actually preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over analyses provided by long-standing analysts within the CIA:
http://www.prospect.org/print-friend...reyfuss-r.html
An Iraqi informant named "Curveball" was the source of pivotal information concerning WMD. The CIA claimed that it did not have "direct access" to Curveball, and that the mysterious informant instead communicated to Germany's intelligence service, which relayed the information to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency. He was described by German intelligence as an individual not living in Iraq and as an "out of control" and mentally unstable alcoholic.
Although there were wide doubts and questions about the claimed informant's reliability and background, assertions attributed to Curveball claiming that Iraq was creating biological agents in mobile weapons laboratories to elude inspectors appeared in more than 100 United States government reports between January 2000 and September 2001.
In November 2002, UN weapons inspectors investigated Curveball's claims, and found that details and information given by Curveball could not be verified.
The LA Times reported that Curveball was actually the brother of one of Ahmed Chalabi's top aides.
On June 26 2006, the Washington Post reported that "the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062401081.html
The informant's German handlers said they had told U.S. officials that his information was not proven and were shocked when Bush and Colin Powell used it in key prewar speeches. According to the Germans, Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons.
Here's info about Curveball:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_%28informant%29
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...dlines&index=2
In September 2000, the PNAC issued a report entitled entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century". The document stated that: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Here's the document:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/Re...asDefenses.pdf
Here's more info about the PNAC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC
http://www.newamericancentury.org/st...principles.htm
In August 2002, the White House created "The White House Iraq Group" (WHIG). WHIG was the marketing arm of the Republican Party whose purpose was to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the public. The task force was set up by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and chaired by Karl Rove to coordinate all the executive branch elements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. One example of the WHIG's functions and influence is the escalation of rhetoric about the danger that Iraq posed to the US, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud". Here's info about WHIG:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...use_Iraq_Group
In September 2002, the Bush administration created an agency called Office of Special Plans (OSP). Seymour Hersh wrote that, according to an unnamed Pentagon adviser, "OSP was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States." Here's Hersh's article:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/conten.../030512fa_fact
Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon, said the OSP manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists: "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." Here are two articles by Kwiatkowski:
http://amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html
http://archive.salon.com/opinion/fea.../index_np.html
The allegations concerning the OSP are supported by an annexe to the first part of Senate Intelligence Committee's Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq published in July 2004. The review, which was highly critical of the CIA's Iraq intelligence generally but found its judgments were right on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, suggests that the OSP sought to discredit and cast doubt on CIA analysis in an effort to establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorism.
Here's more info about the OSP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...999737,00.html
Much of the pre-war information came from The Iraqi National Congress. The INC was an umbrella Iraqi opposition group led by Ahmad Chalabi, who is said to have had political contacts within the PNAC, most notably with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Before the war, the CIA was largely skeptical of Chalabi and the INC. In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the Bush administration actually preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over analyses provided by long-standing analysts within the CIA:
http://www.prospect.org/print-friend...reyfuss-r.html
An Iraqi informant named "Curveball" was the source of pivotal information concerning WMD. The CIA claimed that it did not have "direct access" to Curveball, and that the mysterious informant instead communicated to Germany's intelligence service, which relayed the information to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency. He was described by German intelligence as an individual not living in Iraq and as an "out of control" and mentally unstable alcoholic.
Although there were wide doubts and questions about the claimed informant's reliability and background, assertions attributed to Curveball claiming that Iraq was creating biological agents in mobile weapons laboratories to elude inspectors appeared in more than 100 United States government reports between January 2000 and September 2001.
In November 2002, UN weapons inspectors investigated Curveball's claims, and found that details and information given by Curveball could not be verified.
The LA Times reported that Curveball was actually the brother of one of Ahmed Chalabi's top aides.
On June 26 2006, the Washington Post reported that "the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062401081.html
The informant's German handlers said they had told U.S. officials that his information was not proven and were shocked when Bush and Colin Powell used it in key prewar speeches. According to the Germans, Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons.
Here's info about Curveball:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_%28informant%29
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...dlines&index=2