« The Edwards confession | Main | Georgia (and Ukraine) » Column: Whispers of a Watergate11 Aug 2008 09:06 am The response in the US to startling new allegations that the White House directed the forgery of evidence to support its case for the war in Iraq has been surprisingly muted so far. The charges may be false, of course, but if they are seriously examined and turn out to be true, this is - or ought to be - a Watergate-sized scandal. Ron Suskind is a heavyweight: a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of a well-regarded book on the administration's security policies, The One Per Cent Doctrine. His new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, which was published last week, contains the extraordinary new charge. It says that late in 2003 the White House ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to forge a memo dated July 2001 from Tahir Jalil Habbush, Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief, to Saddam himself, affirming that Mohammed Atta, the September 11 2001 bomber, had contacts with the regime and that Iraq had an ongoing weapons of mass destruction programme. This document has long been known about. It was splashed in the British press in December 2003, when The Sunday Telegraph reported on it. That story briefly entertained the possibility that the memo was phoney but insisted it was well vouched for by Iraqi sources. Reports in the US subsequently cast further doubt on it and the memo came to be seen as a fake. But up to now there has been no supported allegation from a reputable author that the White House and the CIA were behind it. That is what Mr Suskind alleges. You can read the rest of my Monday column for the Financial Times here. Comments (13)Comments on this entry have been closed. |
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Suskind doesn't merely allege this, he taped the interviews with the CIA officials and is now releasing the transcripts of those tapes as well.
In the meantime, forensic anthrolpologists in Iraq unearthed mass graves in which 25% of the 113 were buried alive. 98 were children, some pregnant women. They were buried alive under 12 feet of sand in the desert. 180,000 died this way, bussed to the desert, stood in front of or in pre-dug graves, and then machine gunned. Earth movers covered the bodies, many of them still alive.
Saddam the genocidal butcher is dead, and Iraq is a democracy. The administration has enemies in the CIA and state department - we all know this. The letter will mean nothing and go nowhere.
@BElla - Are you really so naive as to believe that the US went into Iraq to stop a genocide? Or perhaps have you swallowed the administration's latest convenient excuse to try to justify a ghastly blunder?
The US has been doing a bang-up job policing the world's genocides. That US-led invasion into Sudan, for example, was a smashing success. Oh wait, that never happened. Silly me.
This doesn't speak to your point, but to your marshalling of trustworthiness: a Pulizter Prize isn't evidence of being a "heavy weight" its just evidence of writing articles that other reporters think are important with a capital "i".
In the meantime, forensic anthrolpologists in Iraq...blah blah blah blah blah
Posted by BElla | August 11, 2008 1:55 PM
There you have your answer, MR Crook. To right-wing Republican apologists, there is literally nothing that Bush can do that should be condemned. Why? Because, hypothetically, his intentions were to overthrow Saddam Hussin were good. Any of Bush's crimes can be justified or ignored, because Saddam Hussein's crimes were worse. And ethnic cleansing in Iraq is AOK, because now Iraq is a "democracy".
These people never cared about Iraqi or Americans. They only cared about their team winning.
BElla, you and your kind will be the downfall of America. Have a nice day.
BElla, you're a douche bag. and a shitty american.
CNN BULLETIN:
George Bush today announced the world is flat.
BElla immediately nailed her/his feet to the floor to keep from sliding off.
These allegations have been denied by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI-6, and by the former British spy Nigel Inkster:
http://suskindresponse.googlepages.com/latestreactions
These allegations have been denied by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI-6, and by the former British spy Nigel Inkster
Of course they are going to deny it. Other wise they will be hung up to dry!
better scandal for your consideration: what if the daughters of the nat sec advisor saw fit to target the true enemies of america w nat sec progs: their beautiful classmates...
The fact that the forgery or fake letter from Sadaham's chief of security Tahir Jalil Habbrush, was written after he was paid $5 million by the CIA and secured in Jordan and that the fake was delivered to the London Daily Telegraph in 2003 by Ayad Allawi who was at the time in the employ of the CIA does give some credibility to the possibility that it was CIA or DOD created. The fact that CIA and DOD personel who were there at the time believed it was White House directed makes that at least a legitimate question. It seems George Tenet could do more to address it since he must have examinied its authenticity and source after it was reported in the London newspaper. The most surprising thing to Tenet should have been that Ayad Allawi gave the document to a London newspaper rather than the CIA for whom he was working a week after he had visited the CIA in Washington. That should make George Tenet real angrey!
The charges may be false, of course, but if they are seriously examined and turn out to be true, this is - or ought to be - a Watergate-sized scandal.
This one? This is the one you think qualifies as a national disgrace?
Not the illegal use of torture, illegal warrantless domestic surveillance, lying about WMD in the state of the union (and elsewhere) to Congress, lying about Iraq-al Qaeda links, widespread post-9/11 baseless detention of Arab-Americans, flagrant politicization of the DOJ, illegal destruction of White House communications, ...