Iran's involvement in Iraq may not have increased

April 26, 2008
Iran's involvement in Iraq may not have increased

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Some US intelligence and administration officials believe that while Iranian arms shipments to Iraq continued in recent months, they have not necessarily increased, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper said Tehran has shifted tactics to distance itself from a direct role in Iraq since the US military captured 20 Iranian operatives in December 2006 and January 2007.

Since then, Iran seems to have focused instead on training Iraqi Shiite fighters inside Iran, the report said.

Bush legacy: Setting a standard in fear-mongering

February 1, 2008
Bush legacy: Setting a standard in fear-mongering

When I left the Bush administration in 2003, it was clear to me that its strategy for defeating terrorism was leaving our nation more vulnerable and our people in a perilous place. Not only did its policies misappropriate resources, weaken the moral standing of America, and threaten long-standing legal and constitutional provisions, but the president also employed misleading and reckless rhetoric to perpetuate his agenda.

This week's State of the Union proved nothing has changed.

Besides overstating successes in Afghanistan, painting a rosy future for Iraq, and touting unfinished domestic objectives, he again used his favorite tactic - fear - as a tool to scare Congress and the American people. On one issue in particular - FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) - the president misconstrued the truth and manipulated the facts.

False Pretenses

January 2008
False Pretenses

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

Key False Statements

January 2008
Key False Statements

On September 8, 2002, Bush administration officials hit the national
airwaves to advance the argument that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes designed
to enrich uranium. In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Vice
President Dick Cheney flatly stated that Saddam Hussein "now is trying through
his illicit procurement network to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to
enrich uranium."

Condoleezza Rice, who was then Bush's national security adviser, followed
Cheney that night on CNN's Late Edition. In answer to a question from Wolf
Blitzer on how close Saddam Hussein's government was to developing a nuclear
capability, Rice said: "We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear
weapon. We do know there have been shipments going into . . . Iraq, for
instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to—high-quality
aluminum tools that only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge
programs."

Active-duty US troops become outspoken critics of Iraq war

August 29, 2007
Active-duty US troops become outspoken critics of Iraq war

A recent op-ed about the war in Iraq charged that upbeat official reports amount to "misleading rhetoric." It said the "most important front in the counterinsurgency [had] failed most miserably." And it warned against pursuing "incompatible policies to absurd ends."

Five years into a controversial war, that harsh judgment in a New York Times opinion piece might not seem surprising, except for this: The authors were seven US soldiers, writing from Iraq at the end of a tough 15-month combat tour.

A war on rewind, in a bleaker Baghdad

June 19, 2007
A war on rewind, in a bleaker Baghdad

At the White House last June, back from a secretive trip to Baghdad, an upbeat
President Bush told reporters assembled in the Rose Garden, "I sense something different happening in Iraq."

It's June again and those roses are once more in bloom. But in Baghdad the scene looks only bleaker.

To a visitor returning after a year, the something different is the spread of concrete blast barriers across ever more of the city, the accumulation of still more rubble, the sectarian "cleansing" of neighborhoods, the ruin of still more lives — of friends whose loved ones have fled, been kidnapped, been killed. And for those left behind, life is worse.

Petraeus Says Iraq Plan Won't Succeed By September

June 17, 2007
Petraeus Says Iraq Plan Won't Succeed By September

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- The odds of building a stable Iraqi government by September are slim, even with the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to give lawmakers in Baghdad security, said the top U.S. general in the Middle East country.

The "aggregate level" of violence has not diminished since the troop increase began five months ago, General David Petraeus said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." Asked whether he thought the strategy could succeed by early September when he's due to report to Congress, Petraeus was negative.

White House denies prior knowledge of Abu Ghraib abuse

June 17, 2007
White House denies prior knowledge of Abu Ghraib abuse

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House on Sunday insisted that
President George W. Bush first learned about abuse at Iraq's
Abu Ghraib prison from media reports, contrary to assertions by a former top general that Bush likely knew about the scandal before it broke.

"The President said over three years ago that he first saw the pictures of the abuse on television," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the weekend at his ranch.

Training Iraqi troops no longer driving force in U.S. policy

April 19, 2007
Training Iraqi troops no longer driving force in U.S. policy

WASHINGTON - Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

Bush 2004 - War On Terror:"I don’t think you can win it."

A blast from the past
Sept. 2, 2004
Bush 2004 - War On Terror:"I don’t think you can win it."

Lauer: You said to me a second ago, one of the things you'll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war on terror in the next four years?

President Bush: I have never said we can win it in four years.

Lauer: So I'm just saying can we win it? Do you see that?

President Bush: I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world — let's put it that way.

Carl Bernstein on Nixon vs. Bush

February 14, 2007
Carl Bernstein on Nixon vs. Bush

BERNSTEIN: First, Nixon's relationship to the press was consistent with his relationship to many institutions and people. He saw himself as a victim. We now understand the psyche of Richard Nixon, that his was a self-destructive act and presidency.

I think what we're talking about with the Bush administration is a far different matter in which disinformation, misinformation and unwillingness to tell the truth -- a willingness to lie both in the Oval Office, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the office of the vice president, the vice president himself -- is something that I have never witnessed before on this scale.

The Bait-and-Switch White House

January 27, 2007
The Bait-and-Switch White House

All of that was distressing enough. But in Friday's Times, Adam Liptak gave an account of the way the administration — after grandly announcing that it was finally going to obey the law on wiretapping — is trying to quash lawsuits over Mr. Bush's outlaw eavesdropping operations by imposing outrageous secrecy and control over the courts.

Justice Department lawyers are withholding evidence from plaintiffs and even restricting the access of judges to documents in cases involving Mr. Bush's decision to authorize the warrantless interception of e-mail and phone calls. In one suit, Justice Department lawyers tried to seize computers from the plaintiffs' lawyers to remove a document central to their case against the government.

In response to these and other serious concerns, the Justice Department offered only the most twisted excuses, which a federal judge rightly compared to "Alice in Wonderland."

Bush Portrayal of 'The Enemy' Often Flawed

January 24, 2007
Bush Portrayal of 'The Enemy' Often Flawed

In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush presented an arguably misleading and often flawed description of "the enemy" that the United States faces overseas, lumping together disparate groups with opposing ideologies to suggest that they have a single-minded focus in attacking the United States.

Under Bush's rubric, a country such as Iran -- which enjoys diplomatic representation and billions of dollars in trade with major European countries -- is lumped together with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat," Bush said, referring to the different branches of the Muslim religion.

Similarly, Bush asserted that Shia Hezbollah, which has won seats in the Lebanese government, is a terrorist group "second only to al-Qaeda in the American lives it has taken." Bush is referring to attacks nearly a quarter-century ago on a U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks when the United States intervened in Lebanon's civil war by shelling Hezbollah strongholds. Hezbollah has evolved into primarily an anti-Israeli militant organization -- it fought a war with Israel last summer -- but the European Union does not list it as a terrorist organization.

Administration leaving out important details on Iraq

January 14, 2007
Administration leaving out important details on Iraq

But the president's account understates by at least 15 months when Shiite death squads began
targeting Sunni politicians and clerics. It also ignores the role that Iranian-backed Shiite
groups had in death squad activities prior to the Samarra bombing.

Blaming the start of sectarian violence in Iraq on the Golden Dome bombing risks policy errors
because it underestimates the depth of sectarian hatred in Iraq and overlooks the conflict's root
causes. The Bush account also fails to acknowledge that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups stoked
the conflict.

President Bush met at the White House in November with the head of one of those groups: Abdul
Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. SCIRI's Badr Organization militia is widely reported to have infiltrated Iraq's security forces and to be involved in death squad activities.