Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq

By Peter W. Galbraith  
Boston Globe
October 27, 2004

Peter W. Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia, is a fellow at the Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. In the 1980s, he documented Iraqi atrocities against the Kurds for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

IN 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion -- the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.

I also described two particularly disturbing incidents -- one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.

When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.

To read the rest of this column, see Boston Globe

Bush Backers Steadfast on Saddam-Al-Qaeda, WMD

Jim Lobe
IPS

[Blog editor's note: In more than 35 years of studying poll results of this sort, dating back to Vietnam, I can not remember such a division of belief about reality in the American electorate, at least not after so much evidence has been presented by so many experts to support only one reasonable conclusion.

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IPS) - Three out of four self-described supporters of President George W Bush still believe pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programmes to produce them, and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave "substantial support" to al-Qaeda terrorists, according to a survey released Thursday.Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago, before the publication of a series of well-publicised official government reports that debunked both notions.

Those are among the most striking findings of the survey, which was conducted in mid-October by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm.

The survey, which polled the views of nearly 900 randomly chosen respondents equally divided between Bush supporters and those intending to vote for Democratic Senator John Kerry in November's presidential election, found a yawning gap in the world views, particularly as regards pre-war Iraq, between the two groups.

"It is normal during elections for supporters of presidential candidates to have fundamental disagreements about values or strategies," said an analysis produced by PIPA.

But "the current election is unique in that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters have profoundly different perceptions of reality. In the face of a stream of high-level assessments about pre-war Iraq, Bush supporters cling to the refuted beliefs that Iraq had WMD or supported al-Qaeda."

To read the rest of this article, see IPS

The Verdict Is In

Editorial
The New York Times
October 7, 2004

Sanctions worked. Weapons inspectors worked. That is the bottom line of the long-awaited report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, written by President Bush's handpicked investigator.

In the 18 months since President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, justifying the decision by saying that Saddam Hussein was "a gathering threat" to the United States, Americans have come to realize that Iraq had no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. But the report issued yesterday goes further. It says that Iraq had no factories to produce illicit weapons and that its ability to resume production was growing more feeble every year. While Mr. Hussein retained dreams of someday getting back into the chemical warfare business, his chosen target was Iran, not the United States.

The report shows that the international sanctions that Mr. Bush dismissed and demeaned before the war - and still does - were astonishingly effective. Mr. Hussein hoped to get out from under the sanctions, and the report's author, Charles Duelfer, loyally told Congress yesterday that he thought that could have happened. But his report said the Iraqis lacked even a formal strategy or a plan to reconstitute their weapons programs if it did.

To read the rest of the editorial, see The New York Times

Bush administration in denial about lack of Iraq WMD: Kay

AFP
Oct 7, 2004

Blog editor's note: Never have I seen more experts, more reports, more findings point to a conclusion that at the same time is rejected by a President and his administration. Yet public opinion appears frozen in its tracks.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush 's administration is in denial over the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the US-led invasion in 2003, ex-chief US arms inspector David Kay said.

A report by the Iraq Survey Group that Kay ran until he quit at the start of the year found Iraq had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons when Bush was saying that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a growing threat.

The White House has insisted Saddam was a threat to the United States and had weapons of mass destruction capability, but Kay told NBC television: "All I can say is 'denial' is not just a river in Egypt."

"The report is scary enough without misrepresenting what it says," he added.

Iraq "was not an imminent and growing threat because of its own weapons of mass destruction," he added.

To read the rest of the story, see Yahoo! News

Most at Guantanamo to Be Freed or Sent Home, Officer Says

By John Mintz

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 6, 2004; Page A16

Most of the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are likely to be freed or sent to their home countries for further investigation because many pose little threat and are not providing much valuable intelligence, the facility's deputy commander has said.

The remarks by Army Brig. Gen. Martin Lucenti in yesterday's edition of London's Financial Times appeared to conflict with past comments by U.S. military commanders who have stressed the value of the information obtained from the detainees and the danger many would pose if released.

"Of the 550 [detainees] that we have, I would say most of them, the majority of them, will either be released or transferred to their own countries," Lucenti was quoted as saying in the British newspaper. "Most of these guys weren't fighting. They were running. Even if somebody has been found to be an enemy combatant, many of them will be released because they will be of low intelligence value and low threat status.

To read the rest of the story, see Washingtonpost.com

Iraq: Politics or Policy?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New York Times
October 3, 2004

Sorry, I've been away writing a book. I'm back, so let's get right down to business: We're in trouble in Iraq.

I don't know what is salvageable there anymore. I hope it is something decent and I am certain we have to try our best to bring about elections and rebuild the Iraqi Army to give every chance for decency to emerge there. But here is the cold, hard truth: This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration, in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage, and as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever.

What happened? The Bush team got its doctrines mixed up: it applied the Powell Doctrine to the campaign against John Kerry - "overwhelming force" without mercy, based on a strategy of shock and awe at the Republican convention, followed by a propaganda blitz that got its message across in every possible way, including through distortion. If only the Bush team had gone after the remnants of Saddam's army in the Sunni Triangle with the brutal efficiency it has gone after Senator Kerry in the Iowa-Ohio-Michigan triangle. If only the Bush team had spoken to Iraqis and Arabs with as clear a message as it did to the Republican base. No, alas, while the Bush people applied the Powell Doctrine in the Midwest, they applied the Rumsfeld Doctrine in the Middle East. And the Rumsfeld Doctrine is: "Just enough troops to lose." Donald Rumsfeld tried to prove that a small, mobile army was all that was needed to topple Saddam, without realizing that such a limited force could never stabilize Iraq. He never thought it would have to. He thought his Iraqi pals would do it. He was wrong.

To read the rest of this analysis, see The New York Times

Pulling Back the Curtain: What a Top Reporter in Baghdad Really Thinks About the War
Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi confirms that she penned a scathing letter that calls the war in Iraq an outright "disaster." She also reveals that reporters in Baghdad are working under "virtual house arrest."

By Greg Mitchell
Editor & Publisher

(September 29, 2004) -- Readers of any nailbiting story from Iraq in a major mainstream newspaper must often wonder what the dispassionate reporter really thinks about the chaotic situation there, and what he or she might be saying in private letters or in conversations with friends back home.

Now, at least in the case of Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi, we know. Blog editor's note: And what we know is that Ms. Fassihi has come to conclude, "One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle."

To read the rest of the article, see E&P