Recently in WMD Category

My latest for IraqSlogger is up, and there's a howler of an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal. As I wrote for the Slogger:

Melik Kaylan writes a fawning piece on Ahmad Chalabi for the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, calling him the "nearest thing Iraqis currently possess to a genuine walk-and-talk democratic politician." For many Americans, that may be hard to stomach, as the guy has been roundly criticized for peddling false WMD information to eager listeners at the Pentagon. (He once said, "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. ... We are heroes in error.") In Chalabi's views, everything would have been hunky-dory in Baghdad if the Americans had just let the Iraqis run the show, presumably with him in charge. (Which was pretty much the plan until those meddlin' State Department kids showed up.) Furthermore, without once mentioning that Chalabi is Shi'ite himself, Kaylan says Chalabi recognizes the realities of Iraq and its ethnic makeup, admitting that Shi'ites will be dominant. Well, other than Sunni insurgents, does anyone really dispute that? Kaylan seems to have been snookered by Chalabi, who thrills Iraqis by wandering amongst the people. Admirable yes, but Chalabi has almost zero support in Iraq and perhaps the reason he's able to walk and talk relatively safely in public is because no one takes him seriously anymore.

The quote from Chalabi that I reference can be found here, way back from February 2004.

This has little to do with Iraq, but there are various reports of a huge mushroom cloud following a tremendous explosion Thursday near North Korea's border with China in Ryanggang province, a heavily militarized area. Thursday was the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean state, so the time and size of the cloud (two to 2.5-miles in diameter) suggest it might be a nuclear test, and there were worrying signs that the North was preparing to test a bomb. Well, on the surface it looks like they have, but let's wait to see what radiological and seismic tests indicate.

There's a fair amount of skepticism among well-known bloggers about the Presidential Commission to investigate the intelligence failures in the lead-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. I don't have a lot to add myself, but I'd like to point out some good posts. First of all, there's the executive order itself establishing the commission. Its mission, in an excerpt from the order:

Sec. 2. Mission. (a) The Commission is established for the purpose of advising the President in the discharge of his constitutional authority under Article II of the Constitution to conduct foreign relations, protect national security, and command the Armed Forces of the United States, in order to ensure the most effective counter-proliferation capabilities of the United States and response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the ongoing threat of terrorist activity. The Commission shall assess whether the Intelligence Community is sufficiently authorized, organized, equipped, trained, and resourced to identify and warn in a timely manner of, and to support United States Government efforts to respond to, the development and transfer of knowledge, expertise, technologies, materials, and resources associated with the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, related means of delivery, and other related threats of the 21st Century and their employment by foreign powers (including terrorists, terrorist organizations, and private networks, or other entities or individuals). In doing so, the Commission shall examine the capabilities and challenges of the Intelligence Community to collect, process, analyze, produce, and disseminate information concerning the capabilities, intentions, and activities of such foreign powers relating to the design, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, proliferation, transfer, testing, potential or threatened use, or use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, related means of delivery, and other related threats of the 21st Century. (b) With respect to that portion of its examination under paragraph 2(a) of this order that relates to Iraq, the Commission shall specifically examine the Intelligence Community's intelligence prior to the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom and compare it with the findings of the Iraq Survey Group and other relevant agencies or organizations concerning the capabilities, intentions, and activities of Iraq relating to the design, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, proliferation, transfer, testing, potential or threatened use, or use of Weapons of Mass Destruction and related means of delivery.

Well! Looks like the questions *I* want to see answered won't be. The primary question is not "What went wrong with our intelligence analysis?" but instead should be, "Was this intelligence misused?" As Billmon says, the fix is in. Josh Marshall says so, too. Hesiod over at Counterspin Central points out that Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, a member of the commission, seems to have already made up his mind. And Atrios points out the Democractic response to the appointment of former federal appellate judge Laurence Silberman, as co-chairman of the commission. Lots of good reading.

Oops! We were all wrong. Our bad. That's essentially what David Kay, former chief weapons inspector, said today when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here. Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction. I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war -- certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq’s possession of WMD. The Germans certainly -- the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

No one was pressured, he said, to come up with evidence that wasn't there. "Never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this,'" he said. "The explanation was very often, 'The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there’s another explanation for it.'" And Iraq was in violation of some aspects of "UNSCR 1441":http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000085.php#000085, which required Iraq to make a full disclosure of its unconventional weapons and programs. One violation included the discovery of dozens of rockets capable of carrying chemical warheads and of flying farther than allowed by the United Nations. "There was no evidence the warheads themselves had ever been filled" with chemicals, but the rockets should have been reported to U.N. inspectors and destroyed, Kay said. OK. Most of the West's intelligence services were wrong. No doubt about that. For the record, "I thought Saddam had chems and bios, too.":http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000112.php#000112 But -- and this was probably the thinking of the French and the Germans -- _what remained of the weapons and programs didn't warrant going to war._ Saddam was contained, his striking power was laughable. He wasn't going to hook up with al Qaeda. Kevin Drumm over at Calpundit has assembled a collection of statements from people who weighed on on the WMD issue before the war. Some of them include: Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in his March 2003 resignation speech:

Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of that term -- namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories.

As Kevin notes, the assumption is that Saddam had the WMD, but that they weren't very dangerous.

Australian Intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie in March 2003:

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program is, I believe, genuinely contained. There is no doubt they have chemical and biological weapons, but their program now is disjointed and limited. It's not a national WMD program like they used to have.

Again, the WMDs are there, just not much of a threat. And so on, with the most skeptical voice coming from Russian President Vladimir Putin saying in October 2002 that it's unlikely that any weapons exist, but even so, the Russians worry that they might. So everyone thought they were there, but only the Bush administration thought they were an imminent existential threat to the United States. (And for those who said the White House never said Iraq was an "imminent threat" because they didn't utter the _actual words_ "imminent threat," I roll my eyes at you. Just read this collection of statements from members of the administration.) The question that we have it answer is why did everyone else think Iraq was manageable while Washington didn't? Sept. 11? Greed for Oil? Strategic positioning in a new Great Game? Personal grudges? Manifest destiny in the sands of Arabia? I think it's all of those and more. The Bush administration believed the worst about Iraq not because they had to but because they wanted to. For all of those reasons and goals, Iraq had to become the number one target. Was it a legitimate one? In hindsight, obviously it appears no. At the time, I and others smarter than me argued that it wasn't worth going to war over it. That the threat wasn't imminent, that Iraq wasn't worth the blood and treasure that would be paid. The Center for American Progress has put up a devastating critique of the White House's willful ignorance regarding Iraq's weapons. David Kay is, at best, playing the loyal soldier with this "faulty intelligence" meme. "A review of the facts," the Center says, "shows the intelligence community repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about the weakness of its case, but was circumvented, overruled, and ignored."

• In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.
• Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored.
• Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not well-grounded.

(Thanks to Hesiod over at Counterspin Central for tipping me off on this timeline.) Americans will forgive presidents their honest mistakes. But dishonest statements backed up by willful ignorance and an "I'm not listening, la-la-la-la-la!" attitude should never be tolerated or forgiven. Bush lied. You know the rest.

Well, the great Iraqi WMD Hunt of 2003 appears to be winding down. The Associated Press reports:

Weapons-hunters are spending more time on base, intelligence experts have been reassigned to work on the counterinsurgency, and the man leading a search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons is thinking of bowing out.

The conventional wisdom is that no one in the electorate cares anymore. Saddam's been caught! "The war's going great!":http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031219.asp But they should care, because -- and this will come as no surprise, but I have to say it -- this war was fought using the American people's tax money and their sons and daughters. Since March 20, 548 troops from Coalition countries "have died":http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx, at the average rate of 1.6 a day. Citizens should care because they were lied to. There's really no polite way to say it, but the White House lied about the threat of Saddam's WMDs to get the American people to support the war. And it worked. Now, $87 billion and almost 550 dead soldiers later, the hunt is almost played out. "It's probably time to call it quits," said Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, whose teams were given one-third the time the United States has spent looking for weapons. "The U.S. and the U.K. are so wedded to the idea that the Iraqis were hiding things that they are not willing to explore the possibility that they're wrong," Blix said. If there's anything good that came out of the campaign of mass deception, I'd like to think that the American people won't be fooled twice. Perhaps that realization hit Karl Rove, too, and may be another reason Washington and London chose to believe Col. Muammar al-Qadhafi when he said he would give up his WMDs and allow UN inspectors in. Because the White House couldn't cry wolf twice, Qadhafi is now a man the West can do business with instead of a lyin', theivin', treacherous dictator, like Saddam Hussein. But perhaps my faith in the common sense of the American people is misplaced. I mean, according to a recent Gallup poll, "53 percent of Americans think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks":http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031219.asp, _up_ 10 points from a similar poll take in September. The American people were lied to -- they should be angry. Instead, they're still willingly believing lies.

Some thoughts on the Libyan developments of this weekend: Libya has been working to shed its pariah image for years, but it still hasn't gone far enough There's no doubt Libya has been a bad seed since the 1969 coup brought Col. Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi to power. His government exported terrorism, revolution and generally rocked the boat wherever possible. But because of the United Nations sanctions imposed in 1992 for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, Libya's support for terrorism has been waning. In 1999, the sanctions were suspended and on Sept. 12, 2003, they were finally lifted. However, Libya is still a nasty place to live, with massive human rights violations on par with Saddam Hussein's. Human Rights Watch says

Over the past three decades, Libya's human rights record has been appalling. It has included the abduction, forced disappearance or assassination of political opponents; torture and mistreatment of detainees; and long-term detention without charge or trial or after grossly unfair trials. Today hundreds of people remain arbitrarily detained, some for over a decade, and there are serious concerns about treatment in detention and the fairness of procedures in several on-going high profile trials before the Peoples’ Courts. Libya has been a closed country for United Nations and non-governmental human rights investigators.

Sound familiar? By the way, today, Dec. 21, 2003 is the 15th anniversary of the Lockerbie attack that killed 270 people. Family members
Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadhafi's declared contempt for the United States softened in recent years as he struggled to overcome economic woes and Islamic extremists within his own country. AP FILE PHOTO, 2001of the victims are not pleased with this deal. President Bush, in his remarks on Friday, made no mention of the bombing. So America gets to overlook a history of terrorism and human rights abuses and Qadhafi likely gets full diplomatic recognition and and end to the economic and diplomatic isolation that many Libyans resented. The unintended consequence will be that Col. Qadhafi just got a new lease on his political life, since this will allow him to crack down on dissent, much of which has been of the Islamist variety. This leads me to another point: Pointing to the Iraq war as the driving force in getting Libya to cooperate is just an attempt to claim a success from the debacle that Iraq has become. British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said, "We showed after Saddam Hussein failed to cooperate with the UN that we meant business and Libya, and I hope other countries, will draw that lesson." Hm. Have we? And will they? A good chunk of the U.S. military is tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan or otherwise engaged. It's highly unlikely the U.S. could mount another military campaign to topple a government even if it had good reason to do so. The threat of a Iraq-sized invasion is an empty one and Iran, Sudan, North Korea and, yes, Libya know it. Instead of fearing the Bush Doctrine of preemptive attacks, "bad guy" countries can see that possessing WMDs is a good way to wring concessions from a superpower they might not have received otherwise. Because the U.S. doesn't have any other choice. It's these rogue nations with WMDs that are arguing from a position of strength, not the U.S. President Bush said on Friday,

We obtained an additional United Nations Security Council Resolution requiring Saddam Hussein to prove that he had disarmed, and when that resolution was defied, we led a coalition to enforce it. All of these actions by the United States and our allies have sent an unmistakable message to regimes that seek or possess weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons do not bring influence or prestige. They bring isolation and otherwise unwelcome consequences. (Emphasis added.)

Some problems with that. No Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been found. Iraq said it didn't have them, and damned if Saddam's regime wasn't telling the truth this time. The whole world thinks the WMD charge is a MacGuffin. By the way, the resolution Bush mentioned, UNSCR 1441, said:

The Security Council, ... Decides that, in order to begin to comply with its disarmament obligations, in addition to submitting the required biannual declarations, the Government of Iraq shall provide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA, and the Council, not later than 30 days from the date of this resolution, a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other delivery systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and dispersal systems designed for use on aircraft, including any holdings and precise locations of such weapons, components, sub-components, stocks of agents, and related material and equipment, the locations and work of its research, development and production facilities, as well as all other chemical, biological, and nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to weapon production or material; ...

all of which it appears now Iraq actually did. The government of Iraq said they didn't have any unconventional weapons and -- whaddya know?! -- they didn't. I was as surprised as anyone. I called the 7,000-page Iraqi declaration that the country was "devoid of weapons of mass destruction" a suicide note, and wondered what the Iraqis were up to. (Note to consistency watchers: Before the war, I believed Saddam possessed some kind of unconventional arsenal, just not one worth going to war over. Some chems, certainly, maybe some biologicals, no nukes -- that was my guess. I was wrong.) Placing the Libyan deal in the context of the Iraq war is what is so infuriating. Actually, it's this administration's shifting rationales, attempts to claim successes and cynical of-the-momentism that are really infuriating. I mean, the rationale for invading Iraq right this very minute was to disarm the country of WMDs and remove an imminent threat to the survival of the United States. When that threat (and the arsenal) were proven to be a lie -- or a gross incompetence in reading intelligence data -- the war became one of liberation. And now the United States makes a deal with an oppressive dictator who killed a lot of innocent civilians -- and a fair number of Americans -- in a string of terrorist attacks. And claims a failed policy and a quagmire were the reasons for this bit of good news. Don't get me wrong: It's a good thing that Libya has agreed to give up its unconventional weapons programs; any successes in ridding the world of nasty weapons are welcome. But let's not kid ourselves here. This is a deal with a devil, and the U.S. is making it because it has no other choice; forcible regime change is out of the question because the U.S. doesn't have the resources. This is a big win for Qadhafi, a smaller win for American and Britain, and a wash for the people of Libya who now have a leader with a softened image, but still a fist of iron. *UPDATE 12/22* Juan Cole has some "excellent thoughts":http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html#107199393231717277 on this issue. George over at Warblogging.com also "weighs in":http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000780.php, and includes a handy "dictator comparison chart." And Josh Marshall, again, "finds a real nugget":http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_12_21.html#002338 in the Pakistan connection to Libya's WMD programs.

Not really going to add much, but I urge a good reading of Billmon's post on the twists and turns of the Bush foreign policy regarding Libya and Iraq. He makes some good points.

The _Jerusalem Post_ has an interesting interview with a former colonel in Saddam's secret police, the _Mukhabarat_, who says Iraq had no WMDs in the run-up to war.

Concern that Saddam had actively concealed deadly weapons of mass destruction served as one of primary reasons' for the Coalition forces' invasion of Iraq in March. "In 1991 we were very close to developing a nuclear weapon, but had nothing at the time of the [March 2003] war, after so many years of [UNSCOM] inspections," said the agent, adding, "they destroyed everything."

It will come as little surprise to people who read this blog and others, but this is just one more little stone added to the mountain of evidence that the White House lied about/misused/screwed up whatever intelligence it was getting about WMD programs in Iraq. But, and this fits in with everything I encountered in Iraq and from my own research and readings, Saddam was also fooled -- by "maniacally sycophantic commanders and bodyguards who deceived him into believing that Iraq" stood a chance again the United States' military. I also believe Saddam felt he could bluff the West by claiming to have no WMDs, which is what everyone thought he would say, while acting like he did. By behaving like he had a royal flush when all he had was a measly pair of sixes, he could buck up his standing in the Arab world as the only leader to stand up to the United States, maintain his grip on his subjects who well remembered the gas attacks on the Kurdish north from 1984-1988 and keep his hold on power. But America called his bluff and now the world is what it is. I imagine the White House is feeling a bit like it won a huge pot of Monopoly money. Two leaders lying, for their own purposes rather than for the good of their people. And such a mess of it all now. Today, Juan Cole reports, "three U.S. soldiers have been wounded in Kirkuk and Mosul":http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html#107173487313180742; pro-Saddam demonstrations continue in Mosul, where police shot four students and protesters attacked Turkmen offices in the city; roadside bombs were exploded in Humairah and Baghdad; a senior member of the "Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution":http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000451.php#000451 from the al-Hakim family has been killed; and a former Ba'ath official was literally torn limb from limb by a mob in Najaf.

I may very well regret this, but in the interest of fairness and/or throwing gasoline on a dying fire, I'm reprinting Sheldon Rampton's email to me -- with his full permission -- in which he responds to Eric Campbell, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who defended Paul Moran's work in Iraqi Kurdistan. (And whose criticism led me to apologize.) Rampton is the co-author of "Weapons of Mass Deception," which was the original prod to this whole Paul Moran imbroglio.

As the co-author with John Stauber of "Weapons of Mass Deception," I read with interest your recent apology about Paul Moran, the Australian TV cameraman who was killed in Iraq and who also worked for the Rendon Group. However, I think you have apologized excessively and prematurely.

In "Weapons of Mass Deception," John and I describe Moran's work for Rendon very briefly, but there is more to the story than we tell there. We decided not go go into further detail, partly because a more extensive telling didn't seem to fit within the flow of that chapter. However, the facts in total are actually MORE disturbing than you would imagine from the brief mention that appears in our book. Moreover, I would challenge some of the statements that Eric Campbell made in his comments to you.

To begin with, Campbell refers to an "unending repetition of false claims" about Moran. However, Colin James, the reporter who first wrote about Moran's relationship with the Rendon Group, continues to stand by his story. James works for the "Adelaide Advertiser," and he learned about Moran's work for Rendon when he attended his funeral. According to "The Bulletin," an Australian news magazine, James sat down with "two close friends and two of Moran's brothers" the day after the funeral:

They drank coffee and reminisced about their friend the altar boy, the sea scout, the livewire. The journalist was inquiring of the cameraman's work in northern Iraq when one of the friends mentioned that Moran worked for a "shadowy" company. Shadowy company, wondered the journalist. Whatever could you mean?

The friend mentioned a name: the Rendon Group. He talked of Moran's involvement in helping an Iraqi defector escape and Moran's work with the INC. Moran, he said, had helped mobilise a popular uprising against Saddam Hussein's regime and trained dissidents in the use of hidden cameras. There were the renowned "Paul Moran channels" � he seemed able to contact important people with little bother � and the "James Bond lifestyle". In short, Moran had spent a decade, on and off, trying to destabilise Saddam Hussein's regime for a company hired by both the CIA and Pentagon.

Perhaps Moran's death wasn't so random, after all. Perhaps this nice guy had a secret. Well, that's how the journalist reported it, anyway. Colin James, an Adelaide Advertiser reporter with a 1994 Walkley Award, stands by his story. No one demurred while one friend spun tales about Moran, he says. James' main fear during the interview was that his eyes might turn into saucers. He rushed back to the office and punched "Rendon Group" into an internet search engine. And his eyes grew wider.

The URL for the above story is as follows: http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/0/
B1B47ED7DABBEDBCCA256D480013C030?OpenDocument

It should be noted that Colin James did not intend his story to be any sort of attack or criticism of Moran's work. To the contrary, it was headlined "Moran's secret crusade against the tyranny of Saddam," and it is full of laudatory comments about Moran by his grieving friends. You can read James' story at the following URL:

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/printpage/ 0,5942,6239116,00.html

Clearly, James' account differs from Eric Campbell's claim that Moran merely "did occasional audio visual production work [for] Rendon and other PR companies." Moreover, James' account is corroborated and amplified in a TV segment for the Australian news program Dateline. You can read a transcript of the program and view the video at the following URL:

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/
trans.php3?dte=2003-07-23&title= Paul+Moran+Story

The Dateline program interviewed Zaab Sethna, a longtime spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress. According to Sethna, he and Moran began working together more than a decade ago, prior to Operation Desert Storm:

When I first met Paul we were working for the government of Kuwait. That ended after Kuwait was liberated by the Americans and then the Rendon group came back us to.

We weren't employees we were on contract. The Rendon group came back to us and said, "We now have a contract to bureaucracy, to kind of do anti-Saddam propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi opposition."

So, there was some radio, some television, there was like a travelling human rights exhibition around the world to show Saddam's human rights violations. There was sending out press releases, kind of standard public relations. What we did�nt know, what the Rendon group didn't tell us, was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work so we hired on...

Moreover, Moran's relationship with the INC and the Rendon Group led to one of the high-profile international news stories that purported to document a covert Iraqi program to develop weapons of mass destruction. As Sethna explains in the Dateline piece, Moran was chosen by the INC as one of only two reporters (the other was Judith Miller of the New York Times) invited to interview Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri, an Iraqi defector who claimed that he had been used by Saddam to build specialised bunkers and other facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons research. After Miller and Moran did their separate stories on al Haideri, he disappeared into a U.S. witness protection program. You can see some of the stories about Iraq that were based on al Haideri's allegations at the following URLs:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/18/eveningnews/ main324937.shtml

http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01122107.htm

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/ 0,11581,669024,00.html

As this example illustrates, it is inaccurate for Campbell to characterize Paul Moran as merely a cameraman. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation also treated him as a reporter and allowed him to break a story that was of major importance in making the case for war with Iraq. To have this story reported by someone who has worked closely with both the Rendon Group and the Iraqi National Congress is a clear case of conflict of interest. Eric Campbell is merely blowing smoke when he tries to use the distinction between a "contract worker" and an "employee" as his basis for claiming that no such conflict existed. It is also striking that no one has been able to substantiate al Haideri's detailed descriptions (including locations) of an extensive weapons program that included underground storage facilities. As Scott Ritter has pointed out, it would have been impossible for Saddam Hussein to destroy such facilities quickly without leaving a trace in the days preceding the war. There is a good chance that al Haideri's claims about weapons facilities were the basis for Donald Rumsfeld's claim on March 30 that "We know where they are." But if we knew where they are, why haven't we found them by now?

I think that it is also rather disingenous for Campbell to complain that it is now "too late to repair the damage" of allegedly "false claims" about Moran that have circulated on the Internet. Following the publication of Colin James's story in the Adelaide Advertiser, Moran's family and friends were asked repeatedly to clarify the facts about his life and work, and they repeatedly declined to do so, usually citing their grief as the reason for remaining silent. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has also been very "economical with the truth" in its comments on the matter. For example, here is the URL to a transcript from ABC's "Media Watch," which comments on the Adelaide Advertiser:

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s832032.htm

The ABC response consists of calling Colin James's story "a superficial piece" and then declining to comment further on grounds that it wasn't "a story most of the Australian media followed" -- a classic "non-denial denial" that fails to identify a single error of fact in James's story while insinuating that something was wrong with it. And how can Moran's people have it both ways? If the Colin James story wasn't followed by most of the media, how can it have caused the intense grief and suffering of which they complain? And if they can't be bothered to publicly correct any errors in the story, why should we take them at face value now when they complain that errors have gone uncorrected? And what errors specifically are they talking about? The only error that Campbell mentions in his complaint to you is that Moran worked on contract for Rendon rather than being an "employee." That's arguably an error on your part (not ours), but it's a pretty nit-picky complaint, given the extent of Moran's relationship with the Rendon Group.

As for the complaint that Moran is being villainized, John and I never characterized him as a villain, and neither did you. I think Campbell brought up that claim for the purpose of emotional intimidation. I have no doubt that Campbell liked Paul Moran and resents reading criticism of his work. I also have no reason to doubt that Moran believed in the cause of the Kurds, and he probably also believed in the work he did for the INC. People who work on public relations campaigns often internalize the beliefs of their clients. "Sincerity of belief," however, is not a valid defense against the specific charge of conflict of interest, and by any reasonable interpretation, Moran crossed that line. To say that this is the case does not mean that Moran was a villain, and it is not intended to convey any disrespect for the dead. Out of respect for the LIVING, however, I think the public is entitled to know the full story of how we were sold the war on Iraq.

Sheldon Rampton Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
Author of books including:
Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
Mad Cow USA
Trust Us, We're Experts
Weapons of Mass Deception

There is obviously more to this story than a first -- or second or third -- glance shows. I'll be working on this one over the next few days.

Is George Bush going mad? Losing his grip on reality? In a photo op in the Oval Office with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday, Bush made a comment at the very end of the event that didn't quite jibe with the collectively agreed upon reality:

The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. *And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in.* And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful. (Emphasis added.)

Now, I don't know about you, but I distinctly remember Hans Blix et al. running around Iraq while Saddam was in power, often accompanied by Iraqi minders who were there, one would suspect, on the orders of Saddam Hussein. Bush: "Did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." Joe Conason over at Salon has a good take on this, including this nugget: "Another recent president once said something that was blatantly untrue, if fairly trivial, and the videotape of his statement was replayed again, and again, and again, and again..." He also points to Dana Milbank's _Washington Post_ coverage of the event, which has this marvelously understated passage:

The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.

I can just imagine the uncomfortable shuffling of feet in the room as reporters glanced to each other. "Did he just really say that?" they may have whispered to each other once Bush was out of earshot. Actually, I take that back. Judging from a quick Nexis search, most reporters yesterday completely missed the comment. Nexis reveals just 10 hits on the quote, and five of them are the same Knight-Ridder story, one is a story in the Irish Times, which gives Bush's comment headline treatment, and another is a CNN transcript of the event. The last three are government transcripts. Newsday has something on it, and CNN's Wolf Blitzer quotes it, but -- astonishingly -- doesn't address it all. "The best way for the White House to resolve the matter once and for all -- of course -- is for the Bush administration actually to locate weapons of mass destruction," writes Blitzer. "Short of that, the debate will not only continue but is likely to intensify in the weeks and months to come." Shame, shame, you guys in the D.C. press corps. [UPDATE On his first day on the job, new White House press secretary Scott McClellan had to respond to Bush's "he wouldn't let them in" statement. He said this:

*Q* Two quick questions, one on Iraq. When the President said of Saddam Hussein, we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in and he wouldn't let them in, why didn't he say that, when the inspectors went into Iraq? *MR. McCLELLAN:* What he was referring to was the fact that Saddam Hussein was not complying with 1441, that he continued his past pattern and refused to comply with Resolution 1441 of the United Nations Security Council, which was his final opportunity to comply. And the fact that he was trying to thwart the inspectors every step of the way, and keep them from doing their job. So that's what he's referring to in that statement. *Q* But that isn't what he said. *Q* Just quickly on a different subject, on North Korea. ...

Argh! Why the hell did someone not keep up on that line of questioning?] Anyway, statements like Bush's are truly freaky, and remind me of his Social Security line in the closing days of the 2000 election ("They want the federal government controlling the Social Security like it's some kind of federal program!") He often says stupid things when he's under stress, and when he's coming up with whoppers like this, Ari Fleischer's assertions that the president has "moved on" don't quite ring true. And it's playing havoc with the Bush White House's aura of inevitability. Much of Team Bush's success has been because officials are adept at presenting a _fait accompli_ to opponents and the public. They also like to imbue Bush with some kind of Pope-like infallibility, sort of like he's the Gipper's vicar. THis technique worked in Florida, when he assumed a presidential stance in the days after the election, even though everyone knew by that point that it was very much up in the air. It worked for a while after May 1, when Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared the Iraq war as a "mission accomplished." As long as the Washington press corps and an apathetic public allowed the White House to do this, it worked like a charm. Unfortunately -- for Bush -- it now looks like that era is over. There's blood in the water and tossing DCI George Tenet over the side won't do much to calm the churn, especially after the White House has made contradictory declarations regarding the CIA. There's no doubt the White House is in disarray and in full damage control mode. The uranium story may be the spark to ignite a full-on forest fire of media scrutiny licking at Bush's toes as he makes convoluted statements regarding Iraq. And if that happens, the larger story about the reasons for war might get so hot, it will be radioactive.

Lord. Daily Kos has a jaw-dropping anecdote from _Time_ about President Bush's attempt at not only finding WMD, but also finding just who is in charge of finding the WMD.

Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.

The comments on Kos' site range from the anguished to the conspiratorial. I personally don't think this little exchange was deliberately engineered to insulate Bush, as Reagan was in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra scandal, but instead I see this as another example of the guy at the top not "sweatin' the small stuff," as he might twang when he's feelin' particularly Texan and all that. When will this man realize that he is the _president of the United States_ and he has responsibility -- legal, moral and otherwise? Whether he was lying about WMD when he claimed they were an imminent threat or whether he was misinformed _doesn't matter._ What matters is that people died because of the decisions he made. And since it looks like he was either a liar or ignorant (or both, since why should one have to choose?) _he is responsible._ As Harry Truman once famously said, "The buck stops here." I think Americans need to stand up and say, "We need to stop Bush here." *ADDENDUM* _Time_ goes on to report that after the Q&A in Doha, Bush charged CIA chief George Tenet to lead the hunt. Tenet, in turn, appointed David Kay, former U.N. weapons inspector and big-time Iraq hawk as his go-to guy in Iraq. As Reagan once famously joked, "My right hand doesn't know what my far-right hand is doing."

The story now in Iraq is the growing resistance to the American occupation, not weapons of mass destruction. As casualty reports continue their grim drumbeat, the death toll rose to 201 American troops killed since the war started March 20, with the two G.I.s found dead yesterday part of five troops killed since Thursday. In all, 24 American troops have died in attacks since May 1, when President Bush declared the major hostilities over. (Sixty-three have died in non-combat related accidents with 39 of those deaths coming since May 1.) George over on Warblogging has a good summary of the recent deaths. Saddamists and criminals who cling to the spectre of Saddam's return are likely fueling this resistance. Oh, and Islamic fundamentalists, foreign Arab fighters and Iraqi nationalists, as well. "It was predictable," said Iraqi political scientist Saad al-Jawwad [in the Guardian.] "To any man or any woman or anybody who's living in despair what could he do? He has nothing left but to carry arms and defy the people who are here occupying his country and doing nothing for him or his family. Where is democracy? Nonexistent. Where is stability? Nonexistent. Where's electricity? Where's water?" Meanwhile, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld denied the U.S. was facing a guerilla insurgency. "I don't know that I would use the word," he said, when asked if the occupation was becoming a guerrilla conflict. He noted that the attacks consisted of 10-20 men, with no large formations involved. Uh, aren't small, disorganized cadres of insurgents, making hit-and-run harassment attacks kind of the definition of guerrilla warfare? As Stratfor points out:

The more concentrated the force and the more centrally commanded, the easier it is to defeat. Successful guerrilla movements are inherently "disorganized" -- if by organization, one means a command structure that is vulnerable to attack. They certainly don't aggregate into large units and rarely need to coordinate attacks. It is the very lack of coordination that makes them unpredictable and difficult to defend against. They adopt a basic doctrine, such as attacking convoys, pipelines and electrical infrastructure. Then small units carry out these operations on their own initiative.

Blaming the attacks on criminals completely glosses over the fact that the attacks, regardless of who is making them, are inherently political acts; they are attacks on an occupying power. Stratfor points out that if this is indeed the beginning stages of a guerrilla war, regardless of whether Rumsfeld says it is or isn't, it looks like the United States has been ill-prepared to deal with it despite last night's launching of a counter-insurgency operation, dubbed "Sidewinder," aimed at capturing whoever is behind the growing attack on U.S. troops. Already, 60 people have been captured as a show of force. in Washington, officials continue to insist there's no central command to the burgeoning Iraqi intifada, but troops on the ground are convinced it's organized. "Somewhere in Diala province, something happens every night," said Capt. John Wrann [in the Guardian], referring to the province northeast of Baghdad where much of the operation was taking place. "It's got to be a coordinated thing." But, like so many post-war events, Operation Sidewinder has an ad hoc feel to it. Not the operational details, which by nature have to be developed to respond to rapidly changing threats, but the very need for it. One gets the distinct impression that the U.S. never planned at all for the possibility of an insurgency. Rumsfeld seems to be arguing that the lack of a comprehensive military strategy to deal with this isn't a problem if it's criminals and other no-goodniks making trouble, not guerrillas in the midst of American troops. Criminals are a problem for the police and society, not the military -- or so the thinking at the Pentagon goes. (Which is ironic, considering the current blurring of the lines between the criminal and the military justice systems in the United States.) But the bottom line is that Rumsfeld & Co. never planned for a guerrilla war because they listened too much to the Iraqi National Congress, which gave them ridiculously rosy scenarios. I seem to remember a war sold as a "cakewalk" -- at least according to Sharif Ali, a spokesman for the INC, said on Aug. 8, 2002. "All of Iraq has suffered for many years from the oppression of Saddam Hussein's regime, and there is not a single person out there in Iraq that will fight for or defend him, and therefore, we have full expectations that they will turn against Saddam Hussein. And that is one message we are giving the administration," Ali told the National Press Club that day. And not to pull an "I told you so," but, as I wrote back on Jan. 12, 2003,

Instead of a nice, clean occupation that results in the first Arab democracy ... I predict the United States will have years of guerilla insurgency from nationalistic Iraqis (some of the fiercest nationalism in the Arab world), the dirty job of suppressing Kurdish and Shi'ite independence movements and Sunni power grabs, the problem of al Qai'da slipping across the borders (with the help of Iran and sympathetic Saudis) into the country to strike at American troops and meddling in Iraq's internal affairs by Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia. And don't forget the resentment in the region that will occur when the United States begins exploiting the Iraqi oil fields for its own purposes.

The reality on the ground doesn't gibe with Rumsfeld's beliefs, and Stratfor sums it up thusly: "Rumsfeld and U.S. intelligence did not expect to be facing a guerrilla war following the fall of Baghdad, and there are no coherent plans in place for fighting one. Therefore, there is no guerrilla war." And if Rumsfeld truly believes this -- and there is a precedent for Rumsfeld ignoring facts that don't fit with what he believes -- Stratfor worries that the guerillas have a massive advantage and that Rumsfeld is in fact buying time while he works on Plan B, whatever that is. Concerning WMD -- Remember Those? All this focus on the Iraqi intifada has caused the Weapons of Mass Destruction, the raison de guerre, to fade. No one, it seems, in the United States particularly cares that they've not been found, and any scrap of evidence is increasingly lept upon with breathless hype that starts to sound more than a little desperate. The materials mentioned in the story found date from the before the 1991 Gulf War, when the Americans knew Saddam was working on nuclear weapons. The scientist who buried the barrel, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, sat on this stuff for 12 years and never got the call to start up the ol' uranium enrichment program. Why not, if Saddam were intent on bringing the civilized world to its knees and dominating the Gulf? Before this war, I was convinced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction -- not nukes, but likely biological and chemical arms. After all, he had them before, and used them against the Iranians and the Kurds in 1984-1988 (along with the compliance if not the blessings of the West.) And he had plenty of opportunity to develop them, with the United Nations weapons inspectors out of the country since 1998. So I thought there was something there. But I didn't think he had them in any quantity that rendered him an existential threat to the United States, nor did I think he would cooperate with Al Qa'ida. I didn't think the threat from iraq rose to a level that required a war, and I didn't trust the Bush administration to follow through with an enlightened "liberation." Well, as it turns out, people who thought this way have been proven catastrophically correct, with one exception: It looks like there were no weapons of mass destruction at all. Some evidence may still be found, of course, but it is increasingly obvious that any program to be uncovered was nowhere near the level of development the White House said it was. Can anyone of reasonably sound mind argue to me that weapons so well hidden or programs in a state of such abeyance could be an imminent threat to the United States? So if there were no weapons, why didn't the Iraqis say so and avoid an extremely unpleasant war, as former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix once mused? Well, actually, they did. All throughout the fall and winter's diplomatic cage death match the Iraqis claimed they had nothing. And look what it got them: invaded. War supporters usually say now that happy, liberated Iraqis were the reason for the war and that the WMD don't matter. To which I reply: Stop changing the damn subject. There are obviously a fair number of Iraqis neither happy nor particularly liberated, so those post-war rationalization don't hold much water. So if there are no weapons of mass destruction and Iraqis increasingly nostalgic for the "good ol' days" of security, surveillance and secularism are killing Americans troops, why are we in Iraq?