Army's After-Action Review Locked in Safe - Mentions Too Many Bushies

Joseph L. Galloway on the McClatchy Newspapers (Feb 21, 2008, Commentary: Some inconvenient truths, conveniently locked in a safe) writes:

One of the great strengths of the American Army that was reborn in the wake of the disastrous Vietnam War has been a rigorous After-Action Review and Lessons Learned process that’s conducted after field training exercises and battlefield combat.

Not even two- and three-star generals are exempt from standing up and acknowledging their failures in the Army’s Battle Command Training Program (BCTP), where brigade, division and corps command groups test their skills at planning and conducting major operations in computer war games. A wily opposition force (OpFor) staff does its best to make life miserable for those being tested, much as a real enemy would on the battlefield.

If a general overlooks one or two of his mistakes, an OpFor colonel follows him to the stage and points them out for him.

This program, which began in the late 1980’s, has expanded to help prepare Army National Guard commanders and their staffs for what awaits them in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Foreign military observers have been astounded by a process that requires someone wearing stars on his shoulders to criticize himself in front of an audience of lower-ranking officers and sergeants.

So it should come as no surprise that not long after Baghdad fell early in 2003, the Army’s top commanders commissioned an After-Action Review of the planning and conduct of the invasion of Iraq and the post-war occupation and reconstruction effort. The Army hired the RAND Corp., a California-based research organization that’s done this kind of work for the U.S. military and government for decades.

The study was envisioned as a seven-volume examination of the Army’s role in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

What is a surprise is that nearly three years later, RAND’s warts-and-all report on post-war reconstruction, which was completed after 18 months and presented to the Army in the summer of 2005, is still locked in Pentagon vaults.

RAND normally prepares a classified version of such reports for internal use by the Army’s commanders and a public version that covers the high points of what was found and what was recommended for the media and academic researchers.

Both versions of the volume of the report titled “Rebuilding Iraq” are locked
in the same vault, where they can do no good in educating officers or the American public to the realities that led to a near-catastrophic failure by both the military and civilians to plan for what would happen after we’d toppled Saddam Hussein’s government and assumed control of a fractured, feuding nation of 25 million people.

The trouble, it seems, was that RAND’s team of more than 50 civilian and military researchers followed the trail of the failure from the Army’s part of the Pentagon to former Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld’s offices and on to the White House and State Department and elsewhere in the Bush administration.

The New York Times got its hands on a draft copy of the report and says that the RAND Corp. researchers found problems with virtually every organization involved in planning the war _ not exactly a surprise to anyone who’s read the newspaper articles and books published on a war that’s about to enter its sixth year with no end in sight.

The study blamed President Bush and, by implication, his national security adviser at the time, Condoleezza Rice, for failing to resolve differences between rival agencies, i.e. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon and Colin Powell’s State Department.

Rumsfeld demanded and got sole authority for the Defense Department to oversee post-war operations in Iraq, despite what the report called the military’s “lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution.”

Powell’s State Department produced a huge study on post-war governance and reconstruction that Rumsfeld’s people ignored even though they did no planning of their own. RAND found that State’s effort was of “uneven quality” and wasn’t “an actionable plan.”

RAND said that now-retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who as head of the Central Command was in charge of U.S. military operations in Iraq, had a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what was necessary to secure Iraq after Baghdad fell and assumed that U.S. civilian administrators would handle reconstruction.

At the heart of the costly failure to plan for a lengthy occupation of Iraq was
an assumption by Rumsfeld and the White House that we could begin withdrawing American troops by the early summer of 2003 and so there’d be no need to plan for securing the country or rebuilding an infrastructure that was ancient and crude before the war and much worse afterward.

RAND’s report with its unpleasant truths landed on top Army commander’s desks at a time when President Bush and his merry band were trying to ward off a rising tide of criticism of their conduct of the war and creating yet another fairy tale, which debuted in the fall of 2005 as the “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.”

The Army brass had no intention of dropping that volume on the desk of their volatile boss Rumsfeld, and simply locked it away in hopes that it would be forgotten.

The official explanation for why the study was hidden? “Some of the RAND findings and recommendations were determined to be outside the purview of the Army and therefore of limited value in informing Army policies, programs and priorities,” an Army spokesman told The Times.

What it really was when you think about it was an inconvenient and dangerous truth, much like the one a preceding Army Chief, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told a Senate committee on the eve of the war. No one listened to him, either.

The outrageous assumptions being made all over the administration begs the question: what the hell were they doing? On what ball did they have their eyes on? Perhaps it was something that didn't have anything to do with the war ... perhaps the war was merely a means to achieve something else. Given the recent fire at Iraq's Central Bank destroyed its records, which were in the process of having differences reconciled with various international institutions, and given that the computer expert from Bearing Point responsible for "computerizing Iraq's financial records" was kidnapped last May, exactly what was happening at the Iraq Central Bank? And who did it involve on this side of the pond? Iraq's financial records would probably have the records of the transfers of funds for prohibited weaponry, sold to it by the UK and the US throughout the sanctions -- precisely the information the US deleted from Iraq's report to the UN prior to the war (see US Illegally Removes Pages from Iraq UN Report, from ProjectCensored, and Corporate Suppliers for Iraq's Weapons Programs, and Helping Iraq Kill with Chemical Weapons:The Relevance of Yesterday's US Hypocrisy Today, and A US Media Mystery: The Case of the Missing Information about Iraq’s Weapons, and Top Secret Iraq Weapons Report Says the U.S. Government & Corporations Helped to Illegally Arm Iraq ). Iraq's financial records, and the tracing of them through international institutions would have led to the non-U.S. suppliers, all the way up the chain to the U.S. suppliers, such as Bechtel, who actually threatened to use non-U.S. suppliers to evade the sanctions. Just how many U.S. defense - biological, chemical, and nuclear - companies, who supplied Saddam throughout the 1980s were using that very same mechanism to mask their evasion of the sanctions throughout the 1990s and 2000s - arming Saddam with precisely the items that would be used to justify the invasion of Iraq? These are the very same companies who then profitted off of the war (see Windfalls of War, and Windfalls of War II).

This begs the question: have over a million Iraqis been killed (mostly women and children), and thousands of our own soldiers and civilians killed and tens of thousands maimed, so that the CEOs of weapons manufacturers in the US and UK won't be writing checks for fines and spending a meager few months in minimum security prisons, golfing all day long?

Perhaps it is that the financial trail to them was too plain. What would Americans think ... profiteers arming a madman, perhaps breaking sanctions to arm him further, in order to invade his nation because of the arms, and then reaping even greater profits in supporting the invasion and nation building?

What a successful little business model the boys have, and all its cost is over a million lives and our economy.

The Dodgy Dossier's Secret Note

Richard Norton-Taylor at the Guardian (UK) (Feb 21, 2008, How Labour used the law to keep criticism of Israel secret) reveals the secreted notes on the Williams draft of the Iraq dossier:

The full extent of government anxiety about the state of British-Israel relations can be exposed for the first time today in a secret document seen by the Guardian.

The document reveals how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier. At the heart of it was nervousness at the top of government about any mention of Israel's nuclear arsenal in an official paper accusing Iraq of flouting the UN's authority on weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier was made public this week, but the FCO succeeded before a tribunal in having the handwritten mention of Israel kept secret.

The FCO never argued that the information would damage national security. The Guardian has seen the full text and a witness statement from a senior FCO official, who argued behind closed doors that any public mention of the candid reference would seriously damage UK/Israeli relations. In the statement, he reveals that in the past five years there have been 10 substantial incidents and 20 more minor ones relating to Israeli concerns about attitudes to their government within Whitehall.

The Information Tribunal, which adjudicates on disputes involving the Freedom of Information Act, agreed to remove the single reference to Israel when it ordered the release of the draft of the Iraqi weapons dossier written by John Williams, the FCO's chief information officer at the time.

Along with unfavourable references to the US and Japan, the reference to Israel was written in the margin by someone commenting on the opening paragraph of the Williams draft. It was written against the claim that "no other country [apart from Iraq] has flouted the United Nations' authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction".

In statement to the tribunal, Neil Wigan, head of the FCO's Arab, Israel and North Africa Group, said he did not know who had referred to Israel in the margin. He went on: "I interpret this note to indicate that the person who wrote it believes that Israel has flouted the United Nations' authority in a manner similar to that of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein."

Its disclosure would seriously damage the UK's relations with Israel, Wigan said. The comparison with Saddam and the "implied accusation of a breach of the UN's authority by Israel are potentially very serious". It was "inevitable" that relations between the UK and Israel would suffer if the marginal note were allowed to enter the public domain, he added.

Wigan observed: "Unfortunately, there is perception already in Israel that parts of the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] are prejudiced against the country". The note on the Williams draft dossier "would therefore confirm this pre-existing suspicion and would increase the damage".

Writing in October last year, he noted that "criticism of Israel received a huge amount of media coverage". The margin comment mentioning Israel would thus be given a "high profile". Harming relations with Israel would undermine the FCO's ability to prevent and resolve conflict "through a strong international system". In addition, there was "an important national interest in relation to counter-terrorism", Wigan said.

The FCO insisted on the removal of the reference to Israel after it lost a long battle to suppress the draft dossier, which was drawn up in early September 2002. It originally argued that the name of the author needed to be protected. It then said the contents of the draft dossier should be suppressed to protect the need for officials to give frank advice. The Williams document was finally released by the FCO last week, three years after it was first requested by Chris Ames, an independent researcher, who pursued his campaign in the New Statesman magazine.....

The Dodgy Dossier

The John Williams draft of the report used to justify the UK's participation in the Iraq War has been published. See Iraq Dossier -- http://iraqdossier.com

The Goal of the Mortgage Crisis

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard notes on the Telegraph (Feb 13 , 2008, US credit crisis escalates as defaults spread):

Defaults in the US housing market are spreading from sub-prime to the much larger stock of top-grade housing debt, threatening to set off a wave of even bigger losses for banks and investment funds.

The Mortgage Bankers Association says default rates on all outstanding home loans in the US have reached 7.3pc, the highest level since modern records began in the 1970s.

Arrears on "prime" mortgages have reached a record 4pc, confounding expectations that middle-class Americans with good credit records would be able to weather the storm.

While sub-prime and close kin "Alt A" total $2,000bn (£1,019bn) of debt, the prime market in all its forms is roughly $8,000bn. If prime default rates rise on their current trajectory, they could ultimately cause huge financial damage....

..."This crisis is not going to stop at mortgages. It is spreading to credit card debt, auto debt, and now student loans. On top of that we think corporate defaults will rise from 1.1pc to between 5pc and 9pc over the next 12 months."

US house prices have fallen by 7.7pc over the past year, according to the Case-Shiller index of the 20 biggest cities. The slide is likely to gather pace as 2.2m mortgages taken out at the height of the credit bubble adjust upwards by 250-300 basis points. Goldman Sachs says house prices may fall by as much as 25pc from peak to trough - creating the worst slump since the Great Depression.

Over 40pc of all mortgages issued from late 2005 to early 2007 are on adjustable rates - a break with the US tradition of fixed-rate borrowing.

Mr Sels said $40bn to $50bn would reset each month from now on, reaching peak pain late this year. "Borrowers never expected to pay the new rates. They assumed they could roll over their mortgages when the time came, but that is now impossible," he said.

"There are very similar problems emerging in Britain, Ireland and Spain. We know from the lending surveys by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank that conditions have tightened a great deal."

Emergency rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve will cushion the blow this year. The federal funds rate has come down from 5.25pc to 3pc since September, and is almost certain to drop further. However, the crisis is now moving with such speed that it may already be too late to avoid a domino effect as one distressed sector topples into the next....

...The latest concern is paralysis in the $250bn US market for auction-rate securities (ARS), which fund state governments. A series of deals has failed over the past two weeks. The risk is a slide in ARS prices along the lines of the mortgage debacle, leaving banks with yet another chunk of losses.

Catherine Austin Fitts notes on her blog (Feb 12, 2008, Is Buffett Positioning to Control Municipal Privatization?):

...the housing bubble and bust is successfully stripping municipalities of their financial sovereignty....

...Enter Warren Buffet to take a position to strengthen the insurance support {backing municipal bonds}....

Does this mean that as municipalities go into technical default or default, Buffet will be in a cross-cutting position to dictate terms to municipalities? So, for example, they have to shut down schools, pass laws requiring terminator seed or sell off their land, water, utilities and other assets.

Seems to me that Buffet is positioning himself to be in the catbird seat to play an invisible IMF to the US municipalities “Argentina.” Buffet and his network can make a fortune enforcing municipal policies and scavenging municipal assets.

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The Goal of the Mortgage Crisis: As a community experiences foreclosures, the property tax receipts for a town/city/county plummet. As governments are unable to meet their obligations, they will become insolvent, and will have to sell off their assets. Privatization of water and other natural resources will occur wholesale in the US in this way.

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Robert Weitzel and Meredith DeFrancesco report on The Daily Scare (Feb 10, 2008, Suchitoto 13: El Salvador’s “American-made” Terrorism Act in Corporate Play):

In 2001 El Salvador replaced the colon with the U.S. dollar as its national currency. In 2006 its right-wing government replaced lawful dissent with U.S. inspired anti-terrorism legislation as its national policy. In return, the Salvadoran people are offering Americans an object lesson in the value of our Bill of Rights when dollar meets dissent.

On the morning of July 2, 2007, an estimated 400 Salvadorans who were waiting for buses to take them to the small town of Suchitoto to attend a public forum on the privatization of water utilities were accused of blocking the road and were attacked by riot police firing rubber bullets and tear gas. Two women and one man were arrested.

In Suchitoto’s central square, word of the attack and arrests spread through the crowds waiting for the motorcade and press caravan of President Antonio Saca, who was coming to Suchitoto to announce his administration’s new “"National Decentralization Policy,” a plan viewed by many Salvadorans as the first step in privatizing the country’s publicly-owned water resources.

In solidarity with the marchers being attacked, people began moving in the direction of the melee. Met by police and military units supported by helicopters and machine guns mounted on jeeps, people in the front ranks, attempting to avoid further violence, raised their hands in the air pleading for calm and shouting, “we are unarmed.” The riot squad responded by advancing on the crowd firing rubber bullets and tear gas at close range. Many Salvadorans were injured by bullets or overcome by gas. Ten people were arrested.

...The fate of the Suchitoto 13 should be of particular interest to Americans who value the right to lawful dissent and free speech. El Salvador’s Decree 108 was not only modeled on the USA PATRIOT Act, but the vagueness and ambiguity of its language rivals that used in the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2007 by a 404-6 vote and which is currently being considered in the Senate. The language in both countries’ anti-terrorism legislation has been crafted so that constitutionally protected dissent can, with a corporate nod, be prosecuted as acts of terrorism and result in draconian sentences....

...Whatever the defendants’ ultimate charge, Decree 108 has accomplished what President Saca and President Bush and their multinational corporate partners intended. It has instilled fear and hesitation in the minds of citizens whose right to free speech and dissent are inalienable rights guaranteed by their respective constitutions. In short, it is terrorizing citizens into silence....

Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg report on the San Francisco Chronicle (Feb 4, 2008, Rule by fear or rule by law?):

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."...

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it....

...What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens? ...

I'll tell you what the government is contemplating: PRIVATIZATION of public resources, e.g., water. How bad can that be? There's lots of history documented to show how bad it can be:

Small Towns Tell a Cautionary Tale about the Private Control of Water, At World Forum, Support Erodes for Private Management of Water , Water Privatization: The World Bank's Latest Market Fantasy, Fact Pack, Overview at Public Citizen, World Bank, WTO, and corporate control over water, and some thoughts from the Presbyterians

And anyone PROTESTING the privatization of public resources will be designated a DOMESTIC TERRORIST, and you will be sent to one of KBR's lovely camps. Most likely, all of your assets will be seized too. A quiet little forced labor camp in a remote region in your home state.

Anyone else experiencing deja vu? And should we have expected anything less from the grandsons of the men who financed the forced labor camps 70+ years ago in Germany, Poland, and Austria?

___________________

Feb 14, 2008: Check out Elizabeth C. McNichol and Iris Lav's article on the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities website (Feb 11, 2008, 20 STATES FACE TOTAL BUDGET SHORTFALL OF AT LEAST $34 BILLION IN 2009; 8 OTHERS EXPECT BUDGET PROBLEMS). The short of it:

At least twenty-five states, including several of the nation’s largest, face budget shortfalls in fiscal year 2009. Of these 25 states, specific estimates are available for 20 states; the combined deficits of these 20 states are expected to total at least $34 billion for fiscal 2009 — which begins July 2008 in most states. Another 3 states expect budget problems in fiscal year 2010, although some of those gaps may occur earlier than expected. Many of the other states have not yet released information about their fiscal status.

Lots of good info on that site.

What do states own that could be 'auctioned off' in a case of insolvency? In the case of just the state of Washington, and just looking at the aquatic resources:

DNR is steward of about 2.4 million acres of state-owned aquatic lands, which include the beds of Puget Sound and the outer coast extending out three miles; 30 percent of the marine shorelines of Puget Sound; the beds of most navigable freshwater rivers and lakes, such as the Columbia River and Lake Chelan; and 60 percent of the freshwater shorelines of navigable rivers and lakes.

The states also administer mineral rights, oil and gas leases. Royalties and rental incomes from oil and gas leases supplement states' coffers by hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Here's an analysis on oil and gas production for just Michigan.

Note the US has 1190.62 trillion cubic feet (total) of natural gas.

Great Lakes Environmental Devastation; Population Poisoning

Sheila Kaplan, on the Center for Public Integrity's site (Great Lakes Danger Zones), has this important news:

For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.

The 400-plus-page study, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was undertaken by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent bilateral organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on the use and quality of boundary waters between the two countries. The study was originally scheduled for release in July 2007 by the IJC and the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants....

...“It raises very important questions,” Dr. Peter Orris, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago and one of three experts who reviewed the study for ATSDR....

...In a December 2007 letter to ATSDR in which he called for the release of the study, Orris wrote: ... this is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of.”...

Last July, several days before the study was to be released, ATSDR suddenly withdrew it... . In an e-mail obtained by the Center, De Rosa {Christopher De Rosa, then the director of the agency’s division of toxicology and environmental medicine} wrote to Frumkin that the delay in publishing the study has had “the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities.”...

...Canadian biologist Michael Gilbertson, a former IJC staffer and another of the three peer reviewers, told the Center that the study has been suppressed because it suggests that vulnerable populations have been harmed by industrial pollutants. “It’s not good because it’s inconvenient,” Gilbertson said. “The whole problem with all this kind of work is wrapped up in that word ‘injury.’ If you have injury, that implies liability. Liability, of course, implies damages, legal processes, and costs of remedial action. The governments, frankly, in both countries are so heavily aligned with, particularly, the chemical industry, that the word amongst the bureaucracies is that they really do not want any evidence of effect or injury to be allowed out there.” ...

...De Rosa, a highly respected scientist with a strong international reputation from his 15 years in charge of ATSDR’s division of toxicology and environmental medicine, was demoted after he pushed Frumkin to publish the Great Lakes report and other studies....

...Barry Johnson, a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service and a former assistant administrator of ATSDR, told the Center that before he left in 1999 he recommended that the agency investigate the dangers that chemical contaminants might pose to residents of the Great Lakes states.

“This research is quite important to the public health of people who reside in that area,” Johnson said of the study. “It was done with the full knowledge and support of IJC, and many local health departments went through this in various reviews. I don’t understand why this work has not been released; it should be and it must be released. In 37 years of public service, I’ve never run into a situation like this.”

There is a link to the report obtained by the Center for Public Integrity on the article's site.

Once again, the Bush Administration chooses a path harmful to the general welfare of the citizens of the US.

UK's WMD Dossier Release "Very Soon"

Chris Ames on the New Statesman (Feb 6, 2008, WMD dossier decision 'very soon', Brown says) has this update:

Gordon Brown has told MPs the government will decide “very soon” whether to release the secret draft of the Iraq wmd dossier written by Foreign Office (FCO) spin doctor John Williams.

The Information Tribunal ruled two weeks ago that the document, which I requested in February 2005, should be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

At Prime Minister’s Questions this lunchtime, Tory MP John Baron asked Brown whether he would “now immediately release the document, and if not, why not?” Brown replied that “a decision will be announced very soon.”

Commenting afterwards Baron said, “The Government has for too long withheld the truth about the role played by spin doctors in producing the Iraq Dossier. Now the Information Tribunal agrees that the Williams draft could have played a greater part in influencing the drafting of the dossier than the Government has so far admitted – even to the Hutton inquiry. The public deserves to decide for ourselves the importance of this document in the run up to war.”

The existence of what is now known as the “Williams draft” was first revealed by the New Statesman’s political editor Martin Bright in November 2006. At the time of the dossier’s production, Williams was the FCO’s press secretary. The fact that a spin doctor produced an early draft of the September 2002 dossier has cast doubt on the government’s assertions that the document that took Britain to war in Iraq was the pure work of the intelligence services.

On 22 January, the Information Tribunal rejected the FCO’s appeal against a decision by the Information Commissioner that the draft should be released. In its ruling, the tribunal criticised inconsistencies in the FCO’s evidence and observed that: “Information has been placed before us, which was not before Lord Hutton, which may lead to questions as to whether the Williams draft in fact played a greater part in influencing the drafting of the dossier than has previously been supposed.”

This evidence included a letter from the FCO to the Commissioner which stated that the draft was prepared “at the request of” Joint Intelligence Committee chairman John Scarlett, now head of MI6. The government has told both the Hutton Inquiry and parliament that Williams produced the draft “on his own initiative”.

The letter also stated that Williams was at a meeting on 9 September 2002 as “a member of a group tasked with drafting a preliminary document described by that meeting as ‘a draft assessment’ to be used in the production of a draft Dossier”. Scarlett produced what the government has always claimed to be the first draft of the dossier a day later. At the time, he referred to “considerable help from John
Williams” towards that draft.

The government has directly denied that the Williams draft includes a reference to the notorious “45 minutes” claim. It is however believed to contain a number of other instances of “sexing-up” that first appeared in Scarlett’s draft. As the New Statesman reported last week, Scarlett’s draft includes the first appearance in a published draft of a false claim that Iraq had “purchased” uranium from Africa. It appears that this claim is also in the Williams draft.

The FCO press office was this afternoon unaware of Brown’s comments and unable to clarify what “very soon” means. The government has until 19 February either to release the document or appeal to the High Court on a point of law. Ministers also have a veto over Freedom of Information Act requests, although this has never been used.

Know Your Enemy

Agence France-Presse, on Japan Today (Feb 4, 2008, U.S. strategy toward al-Qaida fatally flawed: analysts):

WASHINGTON — In its ideological struggle against al-Qaida, American anti-terrorist strategy too often overlooks the basic tenets of the infamous Chinese warlord Sun Tzu, namely: know your enemy.

That is the fixed view of leading analysts, who conclude that through ignorance of the enemy it faces, ignorance of its nature, its goals, its strengths and its weaknesses, the United States is condemned to failure.

"The attention of the U.S. military and intelligence community is directed almost uniformly toward hunting down militant leaders or protecting U.S. forces, and not toward understanding the enemy we now face," said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC.

"This is a monumental failing not only because decapitation strategies have rarely worked in countering mass-mobilization terrorist or insurgent campaigns, but also because al-Qaida's ability to continue this struggle is based absolutely on its capacity to attract new recruits and replenish its resources.

"Without knowing our enemy, we cannot fulfill the most basic requirements of an effective counter-terrorist strategy: pre-empting and preventing terrorist operations and deterring their attacks," Hoffman added.

Officials said Friday that Abu Laith al-Libi — believed to have been killed when a missile fired by an unmanned U.S. aircraft hit his Pakistani hideout — was a top al-Qaida commander who led Osama bin Laden's terror network in Afghanistan.

He was in fifth position on a classified Central Intelligence Agency wanted list, with a $5 million bounty on his head.

But in using the "al-Qaida" label when talking about suspects arrested or armed fighters killed — indiscriminately and sometimes wrongly, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere — American or Western forces create and feed a confusion which ultimately makes victims of themselves, experts say.

"Using body counts as a criterion to measure effectiveness is a bit like Guantanamo: you produce a tally, you mix up al-Qaida members or just hired hands with people who have only the vaguest of connections, people who have none at all and finally even pure civilians," added French academic Jean-Pierre Filiu, author of "Les Frontieres du Jihad" (The Limits of Jihad).

"When you reach that point, air strikes and the elimination of 'wanted' individuals not only prove fruitless, but actually become counter-productive.

"These actions only intensify al-Qaida recruitment, instead of weakening the organisation.

"The problem is this innate tendency within all administrations or bodies to stack up figures, pull out statistics, use them to show how they are winning, how they are liquidating their enemies, etc," Filiu added.

The "body count" syndrome is actually a "trap" laid by al-Qaida into which the Americans have "fallen" blindly, added Lebanese-American researcher Fawaz Gerges, an international relations specialist at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.

"You cannot win this war on the battlefield, because there is none," said Gerges. "You're facing an unconventional war. The more you rely on military might, the more you lose the war of ideas against al-Qaida and the militants.

"In Iraq, we fell into their trap. We gave them more ideological ammunition. So many Muslims all over the world are now convinced, and this feeling is so entrenched, that the war in Iraq is not against al-Qaida, but against Islam."

Gerges detects a growing appreciation of this phenomenon "even at the heart of the American administration," expressing his belief that a "new understanding" exists which casts George W Bush's war against al-Qaida as "counter-productive."

The Times of India (Feb 4, 2008, Slain Al-Qaida commander openly met Pak officials in Peshawar):

ISLAMABAD: Top Al-Qaida commander Abu Laith al-Libi, killed last week in northwestern Pakistan, openly met Pakistani officials and a Libyan diplomat in Peshawar despite a USD 200,000 reward on his head, a media report said on Monday.

Libi's death in Pakistan was reported by Al Qaida-linked websites and it is believed he was among 12 militants who died in a missile strike carried out by an unmanned aerial vehicle on a house at Khushali Torikhel village in Pakistan's troubled North Waziristan tribal area on January 29.

The terrorist leader from Libya had lived in northwestern Pakistan for years and "felt secure enough to meet officials and visit hospitals" in Peshawar, the Washington Post quoted officials and residents of the city as saying.

As he organised suicide bombings and other attacks in Afghanistan, Libi "found a comfortable refuge in Pakistan's border region", the paper quoted sources as saying.

He "met openly with a Pakistani politician and a Libyan diplomat and called on foreign fighters recovering from their wounds".

The way in which Libi moved unchallenged around the heart of Peshawar, a city of 1.2 million people, underscored "how freely he and other Al-Qaida leaders have been able to operate in Pakistan", the report said.

On one occasion in 2006, Libi "strode into the central prison in Peshawar and another Libyan fighter sat behind bars in the custody of Pakistani authorities... the Al-Qaida leader, the Pakistani politician and the Libyan diplomat argued over whether the militant should be deported against his wishes to Libya or released to fight another day, said Javed Ibrahim Paracha, the PML-N leader who helped arrange the meeting.

(1) We are pursuing a policy that has rarely been successful in defeating insurgencies.

(2) Al-Qaida leaders have complete freedom of movement within Pakistan.

(3) Pakistan is not looking for bin Laden.

(4) Pakistan manages to lose terrorists held in custody.

(5) Jundallah - based in Pakistan - members claim to have been trained by US & British intelligence officers; there is "member movement" between Jundallah & Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ), which "was involved, along with the Jaish e-Mohammad, in the abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002".

(6) And the CIA and Musharraf collaborate for a little of the Great Carnac routine on the assassination of the former Pakistani leader who knew where all the dead bodies were buried (including Osama bin Laden's) from the CIA-ISI-jihadi adventures in Afghanistan and the Balkans.

Infinity and Beyond

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently intricate manipulation of government policy is indistinguishable from incomprehensible white noise for the vast majority of America. -- AerynSun

Philip Shenon's The Commission

Max Holland on his Washington DeCoded Blog (Jan 30, 2008, Commission Confidential) has a review of Philip Shenon's astounding new book:

...In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in “surreptitious” communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission’s 20-month investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

Shenon, who led The New York Times’ coverage of the 9/11 panel, reveals the Zelikow-Rove connection in a new book entitled The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, to be published next month by TWELVE books. The Commission is under an embargo until its February 5 publication, but Washington DeCoded managed to purchase a copy of the abridged audio version from a New York bookstore....

...Shenon delivers a blistering account of Zelikow’s role and leadership, and an implicit criticism of the commissioners for appointing Zelikow in the first place—and then allowing him to stay on after his myriad conflicts-of-interest were revealed under oath....

...He depicts Zelikow as exploiting his central position to negate or neutralize criticism of the Bush administration so that the White House would not bear, in November 2004, the political burden of failing to prevent the attacks.....

...Zelikow failed to disclose several additional and egregious conflicts-of-interest, among them, the fact that he had been a member of Rice’s NSC transition team in 2000-01. In that capacity, Zelikow had been the “architect” responsible for demoting Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism team within the NSC. As Shenon puts it, Zelikow “had laid the groundwork for much of went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?”...

...Determined to blunt the Jersey Girls’ call for his resignation or recusal, Zelikow proposed that he be questioned under oath about his activities. General counsel Daniel Marcus, who conducted the sworn interview, brought a copy of the résumé Zelikow had provided to Kean and Hamilton. None of the activities Zelikow now detailed—his role on Rice’s transition team, his instrumental role in Clarke’s demotion, his authorship of a post-9/11 pre-emptive attack doctrine—were mentioned in the résumé....

...In late 2003, around the time his involuntary recusal was imposed, Zelikow called executive secretary Karen Heitkotter into his office and ordered her to stop creating records of his incoming telephone calls. Concerned that the order was improper, a nervous Heitkotter soon told general counsel Marcus. He advised her to ignore Zelikow’s order and continue to keep a log of his telephone calls, insofar as she knew about them....

...Even after his recusal, Zelikow continued to insert himself into the work of “Team 3,” the task force responsible for the most politically-sensitive part of the investigation, counter-terrorism policy....

Why is it important ... crucial to the coverup of 'what really happened' ... that Zelikow concealed his part in the demotion of Clarke? Because it is on the critical path to the "successful" 9/11 operation:

From William Bowles:

...The White House, feeling the heat over charges that President George W. Bush failed to make terrorism an urgent priority before September 11, has released documents showing that one week before the 2001 attacks he ordered plans for military action against al Qaeda.

Portions of a September 4, 2001, national security presidential directive were released as plans were set for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly on April 8 before the September 11, 2001, commission."

…The September 4 presidential directive called on Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to plan for military options 'against Taliban targets in Afghanistan, including leadership, command-control, air and air Defence, ground forces, and logistics.'

It also called for plans against al Qaeda and 'associated terrorist facilities in Afghanistan, including leadership, command-control-communications, training, and logistics facilities.'

Now, you can't get this from Reuters anymore because they've pulled it (as has Wired News — if you look elsewhere in the U.S. media, you'll find a sentence or two buried deep within articles focusing on other related topics), but newspapers in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and elsewhere have headlined it. This is quite curious, because this is really is an extraordinary story: The administration had actually called for a war against Afghanistan before September 11th, which of course takes away from September 11th as a reason for that war. And to think that they called me crazy nine months ago when I first reported this. Now even the administration is admitting this.

To read the various U.S. stories that actually report this is to become very confused. There are differences between them that are often totally at odds with each other. One might think that the writers were actually reporting from different planets, or if one were cynical, one might think that the administration simply hasn't fully flushed out how they want to spin this story. One sparsely-reported point, for example: The official date on NSPD-9 is September 4th, a full seven days before 9-11. This however is the date that NSPD-9 was first placed on the President's desk for his signature, but it was revised several times before the President actually signed it on September 17th. A more curious but entirely unreported point: If the document was not in final form on 9-11, why is attacking the Taliban mentioned firstand attacking al Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9-11, mentioned only second? Oh, to see those earlier pre-9-11 drafts, but of course, that will never happen.

For it's part, the rationale of the administration is obvious. With a date of September 4th on this document, the administration gets to say, "See? Richard Clarke was wrong. We were working on terrorism before 9-11!" Well, this document comes close but doesn't actually say that. What it does is say that the administration was working on a war with Afghanistan before 9-11, and the administration is hoping that everyone will simply assume that these are one and the same. If people do, then NSPD-9 is the "perfect alibi", … except that it isn't.

NSPD-9 is first mentioned in conjunction with the 9-11 commission by Donald Rumsfeld in his prepared remarks before that commission. It is again mentioned by Richard Clarke during his Meet The Press interview, with Clarke then calling for its declassification, clearly feeling that this would vindicate his claims that the administration was slow to move on terrorism. Indeed, while NSPD-9 was clearly worked on well before it reached the President's desk, NSPD-5 (Review of U.S. Intelligence – still classified) suggests that the administration only started to seriously consider terrorism intelligence in May of 2001, four months after it took office. NSPD-5 called for the creation of two panels to study U.S. intelligence capabilities, but it is unclear what if anything these two panels ever did or if they were even assembled. They may very well have been, but the administration's recent appointment of a new commission to do the exact same thing (second article) suggests otherwise.

All of this suggests of course that NSPD-9 is anything but the "perfect alibi". For the administration, if it works, fine, but in declassifying a portion of this directive, the administration is showing how very desperate Clarke's revelations have made it. This is a high risk strategy, and could well backfire before a press willing to look more closely (connect the dots), something they have obviously not yet done.

The problem begins of course with Dick Cheney's extraordinary suggestion (there is a reason this man tries to stay out of the spotlight) that Richard Clarke was "out of the loop". As Josh Marshall pf Talkingpointsmemo.com correctly points out here, if Clarke was given the terrorism oversight job by NSC chief Condoleezza Rice, how could he possibly have been out of the loop? Yet, as Clarke has said, not much was going on within the administration regarding terrorism for a good bit of time, at least to his tastes. Could both of these men be telling the truth? In fact, yes, but only if Cheney is not talking about the "loop" that Clarke is.

Up until shortly after 9-11, Richard Clarke was the administration's "go to" man on terrorism. If it was about terrorism, Richard Clarke was involved. After 9-11, he states that he learned within days that Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were clearly planning to use 9-11 as an excuse to attack Iraq. Indeed, a Vanity Fair article out this week details a meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair just 9 days after 9/11, during which Bush tells Blair that Iraq is next after Afghanistan and Blair essentially agrees. Clarke himself wants nothing to do with this, and so a reassignment (satisfactory to him) takes place. The important thing to note however is that until this point, Clarke is the terrorism czar for the administration.

It is in his role as terrorist czar that Clarke brought forward with him from the Clinton administration some sort of plan for getting to Osama bin Laden that clearly involves the use of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. While the specific level of detail to which this plan had been developed at that time has not been disclosed, Clarke's comments regarding it clearly suggest that it was well beyond the conceptual stage. It is a plan that is soon presented in some fashion to members of the new Bush administration, but within weeks (February 13th) of the inauguration, NSPD-1 (not classified) is issued. NSPD-1 does a number of things, but two are critical. First, NSPD-1 eliminates inter-agency (intelligence) work groups, forcing all intelligence sharing between the various agencies (FBI, CIA, DIA, etc.) through the administration's senior staff. Second, it forces Richard Clarke to the second tier. Richard Clarke is now "out of the loop", and he will not get back into the loop until NSPD-9. These two things will prove to be fatal on 9-11.