CBS Falisifies Iraq War History

consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry
January 28, 2008

There’s a cynical old saying that the victors write the history. CBS’s “60 Minutes” demonstrated how that process works on Jan. 27 in airing Scott Pelley’s interview with the FBI agent who de-briefed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In a world of objective reality, a reporter might say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, even after Iraq had repeatedly – and accurately – announced that its WMD had been destroyed in the 1990s.

On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq even sent to the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration explaining how its WMD stockpiles had been eliminated. In fall 2002, Hussein’s government also allowed teams of U.N. inspectors into Iraq and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.

Those inspections only ended in March 2003 when President George W. Bush decided to press ahead with war despite the U.N. Security Council’s refusal to authorize the invasion and its desire to give the U.N. inspectors time to finish their work.

But none of that reality is part of the history that Americans are supposed to know. The officially sanctioned U.S. account, as embraced by Bush in speech after speech, is that Saddam Hussein “chose war” by defying the U.N. over the WMD issue and by misleading the world into believing that he still possessed these weapons.

In line with Bush’s version of history, “60 Minutes” correspondent Pelley asked FBI interrogator George Piro why Hussein kept pretending that he had WMD even as U.S. troops massed on Iraq’s borders, when a simple announcement that the WMD was gone would have prevented the war.

“For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking,” Pelley said in introducing the segment on the interrogation of Hussein about his WMD stockpiles. “Why did he choose war with the United States?”

The segment never mentions the fact that Hussein’s government did disclose that it had eliminated its WMD. Instead Pelley presses Piro on the question of why Hussein was hiding that fact.

Piro said Hussein explained to him that “most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the ‘90s, and those that hadn’t been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.”

“So,” Pelley asked, “why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?”

After Piro mentioned Hussein’s lingering fear of neighboring Iran, Pelley felt he was close to an answer to the mystery: “He believed that he couldn’t survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?”

Wanting an Invasion?

But, still, Pelley puzzled over why Hussein’s continued in his miscalculation.

Pelley asked: “As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn’t he stop it then? And say, ‘Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction,’ I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?”

It’s Bush World, with Pelley – like other prominent U.S. news correspondents – ignoring the well-established facts of the run-up to war and following the made-up story first presented by Bush four months after he forced the U.N. inspectors out, when he began claiming that Hussein had never let them in.

Keep Reading how CBS falsified recent history...

punditman says: Facts are facts, regardless of the myths and propaganda perpetrated by the media gatekeepers.

American Liberty Teetering on Edge of Abyss

by Paul Craig Roberts

"Your papers please" has long been a phrase associated with Hitler's Gestapo. People without the Third Reich's stamp of approval were hauled off to Nazi Germany's version of Halliburton detention centers. Today Americans are on the verge of being asked for their papers, although probably without the "please." Thanks to a government that has turned its back on the U.S. Constitution, Americans now have an unaccountable Department of Homeland Security that is already asserting tyrannical powers over U.S. citizens and state governments. Headed by the neocon fanatic Michael Chertoff, the Orwellian-sounding Department of Homeland Security has mandated a national identity card for Americans, without which Americans may not enter airports or courthouses. There is no more need for this card than there is for a Department of Homeland Security. Neither are compatible with a free society. However, Bush, the neocons, Republicans, and Democrats do not want America to any longer be a free society, and they are taking freedom away from us just as they took away the independence of the media. Free and informed people get in the way of power-mad zealots with agendas. It is the agendas that are supreme, not the American people, who have less and less say about less and less. Read Full Article... punditman says: Read the columns of Paul Craig Roberts. They are good for the mind and for the body politic. Step Two: do something!

None Dare Call It Treason: Who is stealing our nuclear secrets – and why are they being shielded by the authorities?

by Justin Raimondo www.antiwar.com

The Valerie Plame case is, by journalistic standards, ancient history, and naturally any follow-up on a once-important story is considered bad form. Yet there is an interesting – and rather scary – new twist to the narrative. It turns out that Scooter Libby and friends weren't the first to "out" CIA agent Plame, whose alleged employer, a company known as Brewster Jennings, was really a cover for a CIA unit investigating nuclear proliferation issues. The London Times reveals that a former top U.S. State Department official tipped off Turkish agents about Brewster Jennings' CIA connection, according to Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator assigned to produce English-language transcripts of intercepted conversations of Turkish targets – in this case recordings of Turkish embassy officials and a top State Department official discussing, among other things, Brewster Jennings' relationship to the CIA. As the Times reports, the recordings were made "between the summer and autumn of 2001. At that time, foreign agents were actively attempting to acquire the West's nuclear secrets and technology. Among the buyers were Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's intelligence agency, which was working with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the 'father of the Islamic bomb,' who in turn was selling nuclear technology to rogue states such as Libya." Plame and her unit were onto a black market nuclear network, run as a cooperative effort by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel. Accordingly, the Turks were lured into hiring Brewster-Jennings as "consultants," but when the high U.S. official learned of this, says Edmonds, he "contacted one of the foreign targets and said … you need to stay away from Brewster Jennings because they are a cover for the government. The target … immediately followed up by calling several people to warn them about Brewster Jennings. At least one of them was at the ATC [American Turkish Council]. This person also called an ISI person to warn them." The Israeli connection is what's interesting about this covert operation, because it involves U.S. citizens, high government officials who have been part of an ongoing investigation that dates back to at least 1999, the earliest year mentioned in the AIPAC indictment. As Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay of McClatchy News Service reported in 2004: "Several U.S. officials and law-enforcement sources said yesterday that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appeared to go well beyond the [Larry] Franklin matter. "FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon, and State Department officials on the probe. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch [Douglas] Feith's office. "They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq. "'The whole ball of wax' was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry." The whole ball of wax is a pretty tall order, but surely a major part of it is this nuclear black market business that Edmonds has clear evidence of. Edmonds has been subjected to an unprecedented gag order, imposed by a judge in the name of preserving "state secrets" – yet what is being preserved, apparently, aren't state secrets at all but the knowledge that our nuclear secrets are being stolen and sold to the highest bidder with the active collaboration of high U.S. government officials. A whole gallery of top figures has been fingered by Edmonds, who hasn't mentioned any names yet has managed to identify the guilty parties by posting their photos on a Web site associated with her case. The lack of coverage of this amazing – and quite frightening – story in the U.S. media is easily explained: anything having to do with the activities of Israeli intelligence in this country is sure to sink beneath the radar, although the London Times and a good number of international news outlets have picked up the details. What isn't so easily explained is the cover-up of criminal activities, including treason, by our very own Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Times, seeking corroboration of Edmonds' story, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI, asking for a particular document: "One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file." Who is protecting what I called this treasonous camarilla from prosecution – and why have successive investigations into a number of activities by the same cabal of government officials been closed down, repeatedly, over the years? As Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark point out in their new book, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy, the network associated with Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan continues to operate in Europe, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia through a series of front companies. They cite a study produced by the BND, Germany's intelligence agency, that found Pakistan is procuring nuclear-related materials and technology far in excess of its needs, leading experts to suspect they're funneling their nuclear assets into a global black market operation. The chilling conclusion of the authors ought to send shivers down your spine: "Most alarming was the finding that hundreds of thousands of components amassed by Khan had vanished since he had been put out of operation. In other words, Pakistan has continued to sell nuclear weapons technology (to clients known and unknown) even as Musharraf denies it – which means either that the sales are being carried out with his secret blessing or that he is no more in control of Pakistan's nuclear program than he is of the bands of jihadis in his country." The Pakistanis think they are above reproach, at least publicly, by the U.S. authorities, and this strange immunity may have lethal consequences for us all: "In 2001, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, had proof that Osama bin Laden had received in person two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists at his secret HQ in Afghanistan. Both had become Islamist radicals in retirement. "According to the son of one of them, bin Laden told them he had succeeded in acquiring highly enriched uranium from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and he wanted their help to turn it into a bomb. Amazed, they explained that while they could help with the science of fissile materials, they were not weapons designers. "Soon afterwards, a secret army audit discovered evidence that 40 canisters of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the feedstuff for a nuclear bomb, were missing from the Kahuta enrichment labs outside Islamabad after A.Q. Khan retired. Dr. Muhammad Shafiq ur-Rehman, an insider who is the son of one of Khan's former key aides, revealed: 'They could only account for 80 out of a supposed 120 canisters.'" Okay, so let's see where this brings us: an underground network of spies and corrupt public officials is selling nuclear secrets worldwide, and al-Qaeda may very well have gotten its hands on enough lethal materials to make roughly 1,000 "dirty" bombs. Not only that, but the public officials and Washington insiders connected to this network are being protected from prosecution. The case files that document their treason have been withheld, and possibly destroyed. Our brain-dead media, our kept pundits, and the "mainstream" outlets that determine if and when a news story is "legitimate" have systematically ignored the allegations of Sibel Edmonds, in spite of numerous endorsements of her credibility from two respected U.S. senators, the FBI's Office of the Inspector General, and numerous current and former FBI agents who share her frustration with the shameless cover-up of this important case. It is absolutely outrageous that not a single major news organization in the U.S. has bothered to examine the charges made by Edmonds – especially when it is known that Islamist groups are still planning attacks on Western targets. None Dare Call It Treason was the title of a ubiquitous right-wing screed of the 1960s, remembered more for its high camp value than for anything the author had to say, but I've always wanted to use it as the title of a column. Now that I've managed to do it, it doesn't seem half as funny anymore. Is it really time to consider moving to, say, a Pacific atoll and waiting out the catastrophe looming just down the road a bit? I never thought I'd say that, being temperamentally and ideologically opposed to "dropping out," but one wonders, in the face of such a massive cover-up of this appalling danger to our immediate safety, if that isn't the only alternative. punditman says: Keep following this story, folks You will find it here on the internet and not in your newspaper or on your TV.

Canadian General Takes Senior Command Role in Iraq

by Jon Elmer

with Anthony Fenton

VANCOUVER - Despite the government's official position abstaining from combat in Iraq, Canada has dispatched yet another top general to the command group overseeing day-to-day operations for the US-led occupation and counterinsurgency war.

Brigadier-General Nicolas Matern, a Special Forces officer and former commander of Canada's elite counterterrorism unit, will serve as deputy to Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin III, incoming commander of the 170,000-strong Multi National Corps-Iraq beginning in mid-February.

Matern is the third Canadian general to serve in the command group of Operation Iraqi Freedom as part of an exchange program that places Canadian Forces officers in leadership positions in the US military. His deployment is part of a three-year post with the US Army's 18th Airborne Corps, based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Officials at Fort Bragg confirmed that Matern has already been deployed to Iraq, though no official statement has been made by Canadian officials.

Meanwhile, 42 Canadian tanks and armored personnel carriers left Edmonton last week destined for Fort Bliss, Texas to participate in pre-deployment training exercises with the US Army before a summer rotation in Afghanistan. A Department of National Defense press release characterized the training as "massive," with more than 3,000 Canadian soldiers taking part in Exercise Southern Bear.

Such joint exercises are commonplace throughout all branches of the armed forces and beyond. A report from the US Department of State's counterterrorism office described how "the governments of the United States and Canada collaborated on a broad array of initiatives, exercises, and joint operations that spanned virtually all agencies and every level of government."

During his first visit to Washington as Prime Minister in 2006, Stephen Harper boasted that the North American alliance was the "strongest relationship of any two countries, not just on the planet, but in the history of mankind." As much as 90 percent of Canadian trade is with the US, with upwards of two billion dollars a day in goods and services crossing the border.

There are also economic interests in Iraq itself. The April 2007 Iraq Reconstruction Report lists Canada as the fourth largest importer of Iraqi oil. Industry Canada records that total Canadian imports from Iraq have risen from 1.06 billion dollars in 2002 to 1.61 billion dollars in 2006, making Iraq second only to Saudi Arabia as a Middle Eastern source for Canadian imports.

Full Article...

punditman says: Say what? How many Canadians know about this? So much for standing up to the Bush administration. Lending military support--in any form--signifies support for US policy.

We may not have joined the "coalition of the willing" but of course Canada is involved in Iraq. No amount of misguided smugness and ignorance can change that fact. Canada is always wanting to please its masters in Washington, even when it is not generally reported or acknowledged. This report raises interesting questions concerning continental convergence and sovereignty--or lack thereof.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Covering Up the Coverage - The American Media's Complicit Failure to Investigate and Report on the Sibel Edmonds Case

punditman presents...

In an Exclusive BRAD BLOG Op-Ed, the Legendary 'Pentagon Papers' Whistleblower Calls on the Media to Perform Their First Amendment Obligations, on Congressional Leaders to Perform Their Oversight Duty, and for Insider Sources to Come Forward to the American Public...

-- Guest BRAD BLOG Op-Ed by Daniel Ellsberg

For the second time in two weeks, the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.

For the last two weeks --- one could say, for years --- the major American media have been guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations of the courageous and highly credible source Sibel Edmonds, quoted in the London Times on January 6, 2008 in a front-page story that was front-page news in much of the rest of the world but was not reported in a single American newspaper or network. It is up to readers to demand that this culpable silent treatment end.

Just as important, there must be pressure by the public on Congressional committee chairpersons, in particular Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Patrick Leahy. Both have been sitting for years on classified, sworn testimony by Edmonds --- as she revealed in the Times' new story on Sunday --- along with documentation, in their possession, confirming parts of her account. Pressure must be brought for them to hold public hearings to investigate her accusations of widespread criminal activities, over several administrations, that endanger national security. They should call for open testimony under oath by Edmonds --- as she has urged for five years --- and by other FBI officials she has named to them, as cited anonymously in the first Times' story.

Read Full Article

punditman says: Once again, the US press ignores the (thus far) story of the year.

Afghanistan was never Canada's war

January 18, 2008

Thomas Walkom

American Defence Secretary Robert Gates may well be right when he says that Canadian and European troops in Afghanistan are not well equipped to fight a counter-insurgency campaign. But what has been lost in the controversy over his impolitic remarks is that we did not sign on to fight insurgents – there or anywhere else.

The International Stabilization and Assistance Force, which NATO now commands and which includes some 2,500 Canadian soldiers, was set up in late 2001 by the United Nations to do just what its name suggests – stabilize a country emerging from years of civil war and assist the fledgling Kabul government in its redevelopment efforts.

Fighting the Taliban (or, as they were called then, the Taliban "remnants") was a job that Washington insisted on reserving to itself through what it called Operation Enduring Freedom.

Canada helped out in that one too, sending troops to serve under U.S. command in 2002. But in those days, America wanted to keep its sometimes squeamish allies well away from a dark war that was aimed primarily at capturing terror suspects and transferring them to interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

It was only after 2003, when the U.S. found itself troop-short and bogged down in Iraq, that Washington changed the rules of engagement for its allies. Gradually, Afghanistan became NATO's war. Washington's plan then was to gradually reduce its 20,000 troop commitment to Afghanistan and switch them over to Iraq.

Which is why, since 2006, Canadian troops have found themselves under fire in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

It's worth remembering that we keep sending soldiers to Afghanistan not because Canada has been attacked by the Taliban, but because our friends, the Americans, feel they are at war with them.

Keep Reading...

Punditman says: There's just no pleasing those damn Bushies: you fight their wars for them and they complain; you don't fight their wars for them and they complain. By agreeing to going on a fool's errand, Canada is in a no-win situation.

Fresh from their delusionary "success" in Iraq, the US is now turning its' attention back to Afghanistan by sending another 3,200 Marines there this spring to help NATO troops and Afghan security forces. Stay tuned as this renewed debacle spreads into Pakistan.

The Results Are In ...

Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us

By WILLIAM BLUM

Did you miss this? It should have been the lead story in every newspaper and radio and TV program in America. In the Washington Post it was on page 14. In virtually all of the rest of the media it was on page zero, channel zero, 0000 AM or 00.0 FM.

The US military in Iraq hired firms to conduct focus groups amongst a cross section of the population. A summary report of the findings was obtained by the Post. Here are some of the highlights of the report as disclosed by the newspaper:

* Until the March 2003 US occupation Sunnis and Shiites coexisted peacefully.

* Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the US military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them.

* After the United States leaves Iraq, national reconciliation will happen "naturally."

* A sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups ... and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis."

* Dividing Iraq into three states would hinder national reconciliation. (Only the Kurds did not reject this option.)

* Most would describe the negative elements of life in Iraq as beginning with the US occupation.

* Few mentioned Saddam Hussein as a cause of their problems, which the report described as an important finding, implying that "the current strife in Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly four decades -- as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for five years."

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punditman says: So the US mainstream media almost completely ignores a poll that paints the US in a bad light? Imagine my shock!

Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb

A Real 9/11 Cover-Up?

By DAVE LINDORFF

If a new article just published Saturday in the Times of London based upon information provided by US government whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, we have not only solid evidence of prior knowledge of 9-11 by high up US government officials, but evidence of treasonous activity by many of those same officials involving efforts to provide US nuclear secrets to America's enemies, even including Al Qaeda.

The story also casts a chilling light on the so-called "accidental" flight of six nuclear-armed cruise missiles aboard an errant B-52 that flew last Aug. 30 from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The Sunday Times reports that Edmonds, whose whistleblowing efforts have been studiously ignored by what passes for the news media in American news media, approached the Rupert Murdoch-owned British paper a month ago after reading a report there that an Al-Qaeda leader had been training some of the 9-11 hijackers at a base in Turkey, a US NATO alley, under the noses of the Turkish military.

Edmonds, who was recruited by the FBI after 9-11 because of her Turkish and Farsi language skills, has long been claiming that in her FBI job of covertly monitoring conversations between Turkish, Israeli, Persian and other foreign agents and US contacts, including a backlog of untranslated tapes dating back to 1997, she had heard evidence of "money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology." But the Turkish training for 9-11 rang more alarm bells and made her decide that talking behind closed doors to Congress or the FBI was not enough. She had to go public.

Edmonds claims in the Times that even as she was providing evidence of moles within the US State Department, the Pentagon, and the nuclear weapons establishment, who were providing nuclear secrets for cash, through Turkey, to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, agencies within the Bush administration were actively working to block investigation and to shield those who were committing the acts of treason.

Pakistan's ISI is known to have had, and to still maintain close contacts with Al-Qaeda. Indeed, the Times notes that Pakistan's nuclear god-father, General Mahmoud Ahmad, was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

Edmonds claims, in the Times article, that following the 9-11 attacks, FBI investigators took a number of Turkish and Pakistani operatives into custody for questioning about foreknowledge of the attacks, but that a high-ranking US State Department official repeatedly acted to spirit them out of the country.

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On Sabbatical

This blog is on sabbatical for the time being as Punditman deals with a family health issue. Hope to be back soon...