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Last Updated: Sep 8, 2008 - 8:50:56 AM |
The convention offered Bush, whom the
New York Times described as "the most unpopular president in recent
history, a chance to revel, though remotely, in the kind of affection
he rarely gets these days."
Bush must also be relieved that with media attention focused on the
presidential race, he seems to have weathered the storm raised last
month by yet another book accusing his administration of fabrication of
evidence to justify the Iraq war.
In his new book The Way of the World, Pulitzer-Prize reporter Ron
Suskind makes two accusations against the Bush administration. First,
that the Bush administration received credible information from the
British intelligence (who were informed by Iraq's intelligence chief
Tahir Habbush) that Saddam Hussain had no weapons of mass destruction.
Bush, and especially Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative entourage
dismissed the information because they were intent on waging war.
Suskind reports that after the invasion of Iraq and the confirmation
that Habbush was telling the truth, the Americans made a secret
arrangement with him, hid him in Jordan and paid him $5 million.
Second, when it became clear after the invasion that there were no
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration, under
pressure to justify the war decision, ordered the CIA to fabricate
evidence in the form of a letter purportedly written by Habbush, and
backdated to 2001.
The letter is addressed to Saddam Hussain and in which Habbush
purportedly writes that Mohammad Atta, the alleged mastermind of the
September 11 attacks, had visited Iraq and "displayed extraordinary
effort" and that he would be "responsible for attacking the targets we
have agreed to destroy".
The forged letter could thus be used as 'evidence' of the link between
Saddam Hussain and the September 11 attacks, a link which Bush and
Cheney deceivingly claimed justified the war.
Conveniently, the forged letter also mentions that Iraq is receiving
via Libya and Syria "a shipment from Niger", a clear allusion to
uranium which Bush falsely claimed in his State of the Union address of
January 2003 that Saddam Hussain intended to use to develop nuclear
weapons.
A key figure in this daring and illegal deception of the American
people is Iraqi politician Eyad Allawi, who was installed by the
Americans as the first interim prime minister of Iraq following the
invasion. While Ahmad Challabi was working with the Pentagon and
feeding the American military disinformation about the alleged
existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Allawi was working for
the CIA, which funded his opposition to and plotting against Saddam
Hussain, and prepared him for leadership position in Iraq.
It was Allawi who passed on the forged letter to the British daily The
Telegraph's Con Coughlin, a vocal supporter of the war, who published
it in the front page on December 14, 2003, under the title: "Terrorist
Behind September 11 Strike was Trained by Saddam"
The Telegraph story was picked up by William Safire, another vocal
supporter of the war, in the New York Times issue of December 15, 2003
and was disseminated across the globe by media outlets and by
supporters of the war.
Forgery
But it was not long before the forgery was discovered. A Newsweek
investigation concluded that the letter "is probably a fabrication that
is contradicted by US law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying
at cheap motels and apartments in the United States" at the time the
forged letter claims he visited Baghdad.
Who ordered and who carried out the forgery was not established until
Ron Suskind's claim last month that the letter was ordered by the Bush
White House and the assignment carried out by the CIA.
An article in the Washington Post by Dana Priest and Robin Wright
entitled "Iraq Spy Service Planned by US To Stem Attacks" stated:
"Badran and Eyad Alawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this
week at CIA headquarters in Langley... Both men have worked closely
with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite
coups against Saddam Hussain." (reproduced in Intelligence: December
2003 Archives).
The Post article was published on December 11, 2003. Allawi then was at
the CIA headquarters on or about December 11. The CIA could have given
the forged letter to Allawi on December 11 or earlier; Allawi passes it
on to Coughlin on the 12th or the 13th, and Coughlin publishes it in
the Telegraph on the 14th.
This possibility strengthens Ron Suskind's claim that the CIA was the
source of fabrication.
Philip Giraldi, however, writes in the American Conservative that an
"extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence
community has informed me that Ron Suskind's revelation... is correct
but that a number of details are wrong." He states that it was "Dick
Cheney, who was behind the forgery," and that because Cheney mistrusted
the CIA, he "went to Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans [at the
Pentagon] and asked them to do the job. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon
had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information
to mislead the public... ".
This scenario is also plausible considering how Feith, a hawkish
supporter of the war and of extreme right-wing Zionist politics,
discarded intelligence from the CIA, carried out his own intelligence
with distortions and fabrications, and passed it on to Cheney.
In either case, this is yet another example of the Bush
administration's unedifying record of belligerence, deception and
half-truths, and reckless disregard for the American democratic values.
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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