New Leader In Spain Calls Iraq ‘Disaster’ (washingtonpost.com)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61544-2004Mar15.html?referrer=email
Finally, a foreign leader stands up to BushCo.
“The war has been a disaster; the occupation continues to be a disaster,” Zapatero told a radio interviewer. At a news conference later, he called the Iraq war “an error.” He added, “It divided more than it united, there were no reasons for it, time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility, and the occupation has been poorly managed.”
The Pinocchio presidency
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/16/wilson_iraq/
Joe Wilson (yes, that Joe Wilson) takes issue with BushCo’s blatant lying.
...No more will we stand idly by while the president hides from the 9/11 commission. We will learn what he knew and when he knew it. We have already learned that it was the Bush White House that gave the orders to fly Osama bin Laden’s family and a suspected al-Qaida go-between out of the country in the days after 9/11 even as Americans were grounded.
No more will we stand idly by while the administration manipulates intelligence, like the Niger uranium fraud, or worse yet, uses manufactured intelligence from discredited sources to circumvent the necessary channels of government, forcing lies instead of facts to become the basis on which policy decisions are made. And we will not accept attempts to scapegoat the intelligence services when it is abundantly clear that the main problem is the perversion of the system by a few at the top, not the system itself. We will not accept the lies by Bush and his pack of surrogates that John Kerry is not committed to proper intelligence, when in fact it is this administration that has politicized and deranged intelligence to an unprecedented degree.
No more will we stand idly by while the administration blatantly lies about the reasons it went to war with Iraq, or about the costs of the occupation. This was not a war about weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, or even about the liberation of Iraq and the overthrow of a brutal tyrant. This was a war about “changing the dynamics” in the Middle East, as neoconservative William Kristol stated in a recent debate with me in Odessa, Texas. But we did not debate a “change the dynamics” war. That was not the reason Bush gave to our Congress when it voted on a war resolution. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, guardsmen, reservists, and their families deserve the truth from their government. As taxpayers, we deserve to know why $150 billion has been spent to put Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted bank embezzler, back in Baghdad—and why the Pentagon keeps financing his operations with U.S. dollars after he has openly boasted to having provided a stream of false information to government officials. We also deserve to know why Andrew Natsios, the head of the Agency for International Development, so badly miscalculated what we would be required to spend on the reconstruction of Iraq when he told Ted Koppel on ABC’s “Nightline” that our expenditures would not exceed $1.7 billion, total. Now we know the cost will run to hundreds of billions.
No more will we stand idly by while the Bush campaign lies about John Kerry’s record on defense and national security. The criticism of his vote to shut down the B-2 bomber program came about as the result of recommendations by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and President George H.W. Bush. It is outrageous for the Bush-Cheney campaign to take that vote out of context, as it is outrageous to suggest that a unanimously adopted congressional resolution to return monies hidden away in the National Reconnaissance Office to the taxpayer is to be weak on national security…
“Unknown Soldier” Speaks Out To Bring Troops Home
This is an interview with a soldier back from Iraq that is well worth reading. Here’s just one exerpt:
What did you think about President Bush�s Thanksgiving visit to Iraq?
I was there when President Bush came to the [Baghdad] airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.
What was on the questionnaire?
�Do you support the president?�
Really!
Yes.
Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?
Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.
What�s an MRE?
Meals ready to eat. We also call them �meals refused by Ethiopians.�
About this questionnaire, it raises a serious question about whether military personnel, or civil servants for that matter, should ever be asked questions by their supervisors about their political beliefs. It also raises the whole question of freedom of speech. In particular, the circumstances under which members of the military have freedom of speech.
There is none.
Is a soldier free, for example, to speak to the media if it is in support of the president and his policies, but not free to do so if in opposition or if raising uncomfortable questions?
If you are spouting good things about the president, you are allowed to speak. If you are saying anything negative, you are not allowed to speak.
Is it your sense that official visitors, such as Administration figures, members of Congress, and the like, are shown what�s really happening in Iraq? Or are they shown a sanitized version of what�s happening?
It�s cleaned up before they get there. It�s really cleaned up before they get there. We are not going to take them on local runs in the local village.
Because?
Because they may end up dead. And you know how that would look back in the States, to have a member of Congress or a Senator killed in Iraq.
Halliburton’s Iraq gravy train
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/02/27/halliburton_whistleblower/
C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11
In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him…
After the Germans passed the information on to the C.I.A., they did not hear from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.