Lies for Iraq War

Douglass K. Daniel reports for the Associated Press (Jan 23, 2008, Study: False statements preceded war):

...in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.... The study counted 935 false statements.... It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Center For Public Integrity: http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx

From the United Kingdom, the New Statesman reports (Jan 23, 2008, Another NS victory and 'Release dossier', ministry told):

The Information Tribunal has just rejected an appeal by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to stop the release, under the Freedom of Information Act, of an early draft of the now infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction dossier.

The September 2002 dossier formed part of the government’s spurious case for war in Iraq. The draft in question was produced by John Williams, the FCO’s Head of News at the time. Its existence tore apart the government’s assertion, to the Hutton and Butler inquiries, that the dossier was the work of the intelligence services.

The Tribunal criticised inconsistencies in the Foreign Office’s account. It noted that the FCO’s chief witness and Director of International Security, Stephen Pattinson, "was not involved at the time and volunteered no information about the source of his information".

The decision follows a three-year battle by Chris Ames, a charity researcher from Surrey, who persisted in his quest for the truth....

From Chris Ames:

...the Tribunal has allowed a handwritten note to be redacted which the Foreign Office claimed would be damaging to international relations.

The FCO has said that it is studying the Tribunal decision and declined to name the authors of the handwritten comments....

...The tribunal also reveals that the draft was “annotated in two different persons’ handwriting, suggesting that at least one person other than the author had reviewed and commented on it despite Mr Pattison’s statement that it was put aside the moment it was first presented.” Again here, the tribunal can be seen to be skeptical of the government’s claim that Williams’ work was not taken forward.

However, the tribunal has ordered that one of the handwritten notes should be redacted from the draft when it is published. It is clear that the Foreign Office has claimed that disclosure of this comment would be damaging to international relations, a claim that it did not make at the time of its initial refusal. The decision notice states that this issue is covered in a confidential annexe.

On the content of the draft itself, the Tribunal reveals that some intelligence-related sections of the published dossier bear a resemblance to parts of the Williams draft, although this does not “lead on easily to the conclusion that one had been based on the other”. The dossier was finally published on 24 September 2002, two weeks after Scarlett’s “first draft”, and was central to the case it made to Parliament for war in Iraq.

Responding to the Information Tribunal decision, Conservative MP John Baron said: "This decision lifts the lid on government efforts to cover-up the role played by spin doctors in producing the Iraq Dossier.

"I am now pressing the Foreign Secretary immediately to make public the Williams draft, so that we can assess for ourselves the significance of this document in the run up to war – a war which we should never had been party to.

"The 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 Government cannot hide this document any longer."

Pakistan manages to "lose" Rashid Rauf

The South Africa Mail & Guardian reports on the loss of Rashid Rauf from custody, "accused of involvement in an alleged plot to blow up a dozen transatlantic airliners":

A nationwide manhunt began in Pakistan on Sunday night after a handcuffed British terrorist suspect escaped outside an extradition hearing at an Islamabad court....

...Rauf reportedly managed to open his handcuffs and lose two police guards on Saturday, minutes after appearing at an extradition hearing. The two police officers are being questioned....

...There is deep frustration in the British intelligence community that Rauf, sometimes dubbed one of the UK's most wanted men, had such light security and slipped away so easily....

...The activists, Faiz Baluch (25) and Hyrbyair Marri (39) both of London, were charged with inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism "wholly or partly outside the UK". Both had protested against Pakistan's rule in Baluchistan.

Campaigners allege the pair are being traded for Rauf....

...Rauf holds joint British and Pakistani citizenship....

...Rauf has been in Pakistan since 2002 and is married to a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of the Islamic group Jaish-e-Mohammed....

The Times online (UK) reports that Rauf's escape happened when officers allowed him to pray at a mosque.

...Investigators have discovered that Mr Rauf left court in his uncle’s car, accompanied by two police officers, and was allowed to stop at a fast food restaurant for lunch before going on to a mosque to pray.

The two officers waited in the car while Mr Rauf and his uncle, Mohammed Rafiq, entered the prayer room, but when they failed to emerge, they discovered the men had escaped through the back door. Investigators believe the police escorts must have unlocked the suspect’s handcuffs to allow him to pray....

...Questions also surrounded Mr Rauf’s dramatically reduced security detail. At a hearing last year, Mr Rauf arrived at court in a police van with three dozen police commando guards and several escort vehicles – standard practice for a high value
suspect....

...Mr Rauf, a dual British-Pakistani citizen, fled to Pakistan following his uncle’s murder where he became involved with the outlawed Islamic militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed....

...Pakistani police said that they had raided the homes of several of Mr Rauf’s relatives, arrested two of his uncles, including Mr Rafiq. Investigators, however, were dwelling on why it took police several hours to report Mr Rauf’s escape, and how they were convinced to travel in his uncle’s own car.

The Times has more background:

The man now regarded as one of the prime suspects in the alleged air terror plot moved into a smart area of Bahawalpur, in southern Punjab, just three months ago.

Like a social climbing yuppie he even gazumped a bidder for his new house by offering 200,000 rupees (£1,700) on top of the asking price. The £15,000 purchase allowed Rauf to rub shoulders with lawyers, doctors and other professionals in the dusty cotton town’s smartest neighbourhood.

Few in the area would have known that the seemingly successful businessman was also active in radical politics with impeccable family connections.

Certainly there was nothing to suggest, as is alleged, that he may have been one of the pivotal figures in an international terror plot to bring down up to nine transatlantic airliners.

This weekend a clearer picture was emerging of Rauf’s life in the four years after he left his home town of Birmingham to start a new life in Pakistan.

His arrest in Pakistan began an unprecedented manhunt in Britain with 25 young Muslims being hauled into custody by anti-terrorist police. Two have been released while the rest are still being questioned.

Intelligence officials in Pakistan have claimed that Rauf may be the pivotal figure linking senior Al-Qaeda figures in neighbouring Afghanistan to the alleged plotters in Britain.

Sources close to the investigation claim that the contact in Afghanistan may have been a son-in-law of Ayman al-Zawahiri, second-in-command to Osama Bin Laden.

Back in Britain, one of the common factors linking several of the alleged plotters is that they attended seminars run by Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic missionary group.

What is known about Rauf, the suspected linchpin? He moved to Pakistan as a 21-year-old following the murder of his uncle in Birmingham in 2002. He had apparently prospered, marrying into a family that was the nearest thing Bahawalpur has to royalty.

His wife is the daughter of Ghulam Mustafa, who founded the radical madrasah, Darul Uloom Madina, in 1965. It is one of Pakistan’s most controversial fundamentalist seminaries, teaching the Deobandi Muslim philosophy — espoused by Bin Laden — to more than 1,000 boys at a time.

When Rauf became Mustafa’s son-in-law, one of Pakistan’s top terrorists, Masood Azhar, became his brother-in-law. Azhar had been jailed in India for leading terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s. But he was released in 1999 after his colleagues hijacked an Indian Airlines jet to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

He was freed alongside a comrade, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British militant who was later to be convicted for taking part in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, the murdered American journalist. Like his brother-in-law, Rauf joined the “family firm”: Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the notorious banned Islamic militant group based in Bawahalpur.

He had been introduced to its leaders and senior clerics at the Darul Uloom Madina soon after he arrived in the country.

According to JeM sources, he impressed them with his devout manner. Maulana Soheib, a teacher at the Madina who was to become his brother-law, said he was introduced to the family under a different name.

“We were told his name was Khalid, a rich businessman and very religious,” he said. “We did not know that his actual name was Rashid Rauf. Even on the marriage certificate he identified himself as Khalid.”

JeM has its roots in the Afghan mujaheddin who fought the Soviet occupation but turned their attention to Kashmir after the Russian withdrawal. Soon after the September 11 attacks, a faction within JeM allied itself with Al-Qaeda to adopt a wider global jihad rather than concentrate on Kashmir.

Rauf became a leader of JeM but sided with the new faction. This is how he may have come into contact with Al-Qaeda, it is believed. His brother-in-law said that Rauf was rarely in Bahawalpur. His wife lived with her parents until he bought the three-storey house in Model Town in May.

Neighbours say they rarely saw the family. Rauf kept his wife and two young daughters indoors in line with his devout religious beliefs. While women in the staunch Sunni neighbourhood visited each other for tea and gossip, Rauf’s wife was banned from socialising....

...The date of Rauf’s arrest is a subject of dispute. Soheib says his brother-in-law was seized two weeks ago but Pakistan maintains that the arrest took place on August 9, hours before the police raids in Britain.

Rashid Rauf’s role in the alleged British plot remains the subject of speculation in Pakistan. In briefings, Pakistan’s intelligence officials claimed he was in contact with Al-Qaeda.

However, diplomats and former senior officials were sceptical of the claims. They said that Pakistan’s fear of being branded a terrorist haven may have led it to overstate the role of Afghanistan when the evidence is sketchy....

...Another cross-over between High Wycombe and east London is the secretive Tablighi Jamaat. At least six of the suspects have attended study groups and meetings held by Tablighi, a global movement which promotes an austere lifestyle and encourages followers to reject secular society....

...Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks, was a regular worshipper at a Tablighi mosque in Paris. Richard Reid, the jailed shoe bomber who tried to blow up a flight to America, attended mosques run by the group.

Investigators believe that all four of the July 7 London bombers worshipped at the British headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Mohammad Sidique Khan, ringleader of the bombers, lived near the mosque.

Waheed Zaman, 22, a biochemistry student at London Metropolitan University, has attended study groups at the London headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat in West Ham.

Zaman, from Walthamstow, east London, is understood to have become religious from late 2002. Kamran Siddique, 24, a friend of Zaman, said: “We attended Tablighi Jamaat events across the country.” Zaman’s local mosque, the Masjid-E-Umer, where a number of the other suspects also prayed, was frequently visited by members of Tablighi Jamaat.

Assad Sarwar, 26, from High Wycombe, also attended regular study groups held by Tablighi Jamaat, according to his brother Amjad.

Britain Suffers another Privacy Breach

News.com.au has the details on the latest loss of personal data, under the responsibility of the British government:

...Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly told Parliament a private contractor reported in May that a hard disc drive had gone missing from a facility in Iowa in the US.

It contained the names, addresses and other details of more than three million candidates for a theory test taken by learner drivers in Britain. The disc drive did not contain any bank account or credit card details, Ms Kelly said.

"I apologise for any uncertainty or concern that these individuals may experience," she said. She also revealed that two discs containing the details of 7500 vehicles and the names and addresses of their owners had been lost in transit....

Britain's Privacy Breach

On November 22, 2007, Gordon Rayner and Andrew Porter reported in the Telegraph:

Two compact discs containing bank details and addresses of 9.5 million parents
and the names, dates of birth and National Insurance numbers of all 15.5 million
children in the country went missing after a junior employee of HM Revenue and
Customs put them in the post, unrecorded and unregistered.

Today, the Telegraph reports that even more British citizen's privacy and identities have been compromised:

... since the loss of the HMRC discs came to light, "quite a number of
organisations, both public and private sector, have come to us saying that they
think they have found a problem... almost on a confessional basis, bringing to
our attention problems they have encountered with security in their own
organisations".

And Andrew Porter reports in the Telegraph today that witness protection program participants have also had their real identities compromised:

The missing data discs are understood to contain both the real names and the new
identities of up to 350 people who have had their identities changed after
giving evidence against major criminals.