THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
April 2003
Week Four
- April 22: After occupying the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate building in Baghdad for two weeks, US Army forces depart, leaving the buildings unprotected.
Iraq war and occupation
Within hours every computer is stolen and almost all disks, videos, and text documents are destroyed or trampled by mobs of looters. Iraqi scientists will return to the building and try to reconstruct the materials left behind, but it is almost hopeless. The INMD is the former government ministry responsible for coordinating all UN weapons inspections visits, and the repository for every Iraqi government document relating to its weapons programs. Why the US military decided to leave such a critical site unguarded has yet to be explained. (New York Times) - April 22: Halliburton gets the first fitful outflow of oil from Iraq's oil industry since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. (T. Christian Miller)
- April 22: With the CPA officially announced, Rumsfeld's deputy Steve Herbits is still searching for the right person to lead the team.
Iraq war and occupation
(See the April 21 item for an overview.) Herbits has completed a list of the characteristics a new administrator will need: commitment to Bush's vision, responsiveness to Bush and his senior officials and to Rumsfeld, judgment, stature, presence, communications abilities, ability to work with senior military officials, empathy, political negotiation skills, bipartisan respect, interagency skills, availability, and stamina. The organization chart, still in flux, has Jay Garner reporting directly to the new administrator. Under the section concerning key tasks for the transition to an interim Iraqi government, all the economic and political issues are listed under the heading "Not Currently Addressed." This covers everything from debt, credit, and oil policy to the tasks of reform, rule of law, and political process for the new government -- two weeks after the fall of Baghdad. - Since anyone connected with the former Clinton adminstration is automatically disqualified, one name keeps cropping up -- L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, a 61-year old terrorism expert and foreign service veteran who is a protege of Henry Kissinger. Bremer has served as the US ambassador to the Netherlands and as State's ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism. He had retired from the foreign service and thus has no "taint" of any connections with the Clinton era. Bremer had managed Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm, for a decade before heading the 2000 National Commission on Terrorism. Bremer is smooth and confident to the point of arrogance.
- Rumsfeld calls Colin Powell on August 24 to propose Bremer as the head of the CPA. Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, likes Bremer because he and Powell both see Bremer as a potential ally in the ongoing battle between Defense and State, but they both know that to express too much enthusiasm for Bremer would kill Bremer's chances for appointment. Rumsfeld later denies having anything to do with selecting Bremer, and says former secretary of state George Shultz, also considered for the post, recommended Bremer. Shultz tells reporter Bob Woodward, "That's not correct. Don called me and had a list." Shultz personally recommended former senator Howard Baker. When Woodward tells Shultz he had originally headed the list, Shultz is astounded. "That's the first I heard of that!" he exclaims. Neither Rumsfeld nor anyone else had ever mentioned any of this to him, he says. The Pentagon apparently felt that Shultz would be too independent, and Shultz concurs: "I was never able to be controlled."
- NSC deputy Stephen Hadley calls a deputies meeting to hammer out a final organizational chart for the CPA. In the middle of the meeting, Rumsfeld's undersecretary, Douglas Feith, says he has to leave. The other representative from Defense, Feith's deputy William Luti, says he has to leave also, since Feith is his ride. "We'll try and send someone back," Luti says, but no one from Defense ever comes back to the meeting. The deputies cobble together a draft of an organizational chart and the next day present it to a principals meeting. Rumsfeld immediately objects. "This isn't an interagency product," he snaps. "My people weren't involved." "Mr. Secretary," says the NSC's Frank Miller, "Hadley said to do it. Your people left and said they might send somebody back. There was no other option. Your people left the game." Rumsfeld says little else. He knows that, by presidential order, he is in charge. The organizational chart will be adopted only if Rumsfeld approves it. (Bob Woodward)
- April 22: Jay Garner flies up north, accompanied by Rumsfeld's representative Larry DiRita, to discuss forming a new interim Iraqi government with two Kurdish potentates, Jalal Talabani and Massound Barzani.
Iraq war and occupation
The two, longtime Kurdish rivals, both want to form an interim government with themselves as its heads. Garner is alarmed. Iraq is majority Shi'ite, and the Kurds have long wanted to form their own autonomous country, carved from Iraq and possibly from other neighboring countries like Turkey. Any new Iraqi government would have to be at least partially Shi'ite. Talabani denies they are planning to form a government, and instead says he and Barzani want to form an advisory group leading to the formation of a new government. Garner approves, and Talabani says the group will be "all of us that worked with Zal," Zalmay Khalilzad of the National Security Council, who has been working with the Kurds for a year and a half in preparation for the invasion. Talabani lists three people to be involved besides himself and Barzani: Adnan Pachachi, an aged Sunni who had formerly been Iraq's foreign minister and UN ambassador, Ayad Allawi, the Shi'ite leader of a London-based exile group, and Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. Garner says that the problem is that all but Talabani and Barzani are expatriates who have been in exile for decades. "What about someone from inside the country who's been here who's an Arab?" Talabani recommends Mohammed Bakir Hakim, the spiritual leader of the biggest Shi'ite group in Iraq, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). "We thought we'd bring in [Ibrahim al-Jafiri, a Shi'ite exile] and we'll bring in a Christian." Garner objects that Hakim has close connections to Iran. "Jay," says Talabani, "it's better to have Hakim inside the tent than outside the tent." "That's damn good advice," Garner says, and agrees to Talabani's advisory group. "Look, if this works, I'll make you a provisional government," Garner promises. "You'll still work for me but I'll make you a provisional government." He then asks Talabani to get to work drafting a new constitution for Iraq. - Garner tells DiRita to let the Pentagon know about the agreement, and calls Colin Powell himself to discuss the new advisory group. Powell merely says, "Interesting," not informing Garner of the discussions about bringing in a new administrator to supervise Garner and everything else. (Bob Woodward)
- April 22: Hours before he asks the UN Security Council to send his team back to
Iraq war and occupation
Iraq, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix tells the BBC, "I think it's been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals built their case seemed to have been so shaky." (Seymour Hersh) - April 22: The New York Times prints an article detailing some of the ludicrous charges from Republican campaign staffers and talk show pundits trying to paint John Kerry as "French," and more general attacks on France for failing to blindly support the US's invasion of Iraq.
Conservative smear campaigns
For over a month, Bush officials and their mouthpieces in the media have been attacking France in general, but an anonymous White House staffer opens the floodgates of the attack strategy against Kerry by saying that the Democratic presidential candidate cannot be trusted because he looks French. Then the fun really begins. - House Republican Jim Saxton proposes legislation banning French companies from getting contracts to help in the reconstruction of Iraq. Fellow House Republican Ginny Brown-Waite actually introduces a bill proposing that the US soldiers buried in France during World War II be dug up and reinterned in US soil. An anti-tax group attacks two Republican senators who voted against Bush's tax cut proposal by airing television ads showing the senators next to a waving French flag and accusing them of aligning themselves with "so-called allies like France [who] stand in the way." Fox News host Sean Hannity tells his viewers to cancel their travel plans to France and go to Great Britain instead. The media lavishes attention on demonstrations by Bush supporters where French wine is ostentatiously poured out in the street or down a toilet. A North Carolina restauranter causes a brief national movement by renaming his French fries "freedom fries, aping a World War I effort to rename sauerkraut "liberty cabbage." (French fries originated in Belgium.) A Lebanese-owned chain of stores in the San Joaquin Valley, French Cleaners, had one of its stores vandalized with anti-French graffiti and another burned to the ground. In Las Vegas, an armored fighting vehicle, complete with two machine guns and a 76mm cannon, is used to crush French yogurt, French bread, bottles of French wine and sparkling water, photos of French prime minister Jacques Chirac, and the French flag. The makers of French's Mustard, a British company, opens a PR campaign asserting that "the only thing French about French's Mustard is the name!"
- But during all of this, the White House retains the services of its French pastry chef.
- While accusations of French involvement in Iraqi oil sales run rampant throughout the American media, what is not reported is that American oil companies were, in 2001, Iraq's biggest trading partners, consuming over 40% of Iraqi oil production. French companies bought 8% of Iraq's oil exports. Fox News leads the charge of aligning Chirac with Saddam Hussein, looping over and over old footage from the 1970s showing Chirac and Hussein together. The network does not show footage of Hussein being given the key to the city of Detroit, or the photos from the 1980s of Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands. (Michael Moore [multiple sources])
- April 23: Bush spokesman Andrew Natsios, the chief for international development
Iraq war and occupation
at the State Department, appears on ABC's Nightline to tell Ted Koppel and the world that the price of the reconstruction of Iraq will be no more than $1.7 billion. The exchange between Natsios and Koppel appears for a time on government websites, but will be removed once it is seen just how critically wrong Natsios's avowed price tag has become. Visit Cost of War to find out just how much we have paid to date for the war, or see the counter on the home page of this site. The nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimates in 2005 that the cost of reconstruction could easily top out at over $700 billion. (ABC/Al Franken)
- April 24: Donald Rumsfeld calls Jay Garner to give Garner the news that Bush has appointed Paul Bremer as his new "presidential envoy."
Iraq war and occupation
In the organizational chart of authority and responsibility, the newly created position, which will later be called "administrator," is directly above Garner. Garner realizes that he is essentially being demoted. "Well, if he's already selected somebody then, I'll come home." Rumsfeld wants Garner to stay in Iraq as Bremer's deputy, but Garner rebuffs him: "It doesn't work that way. You can't have the guy who used to be in charge and the guy who's now in charge there, because you divide the loyalties of the people. So the best thing for me is just to step out of here." Rumsfeld asks Garner to stay until he can get to Iraq, and reminds him, "This has always been our plan." Garner walks away from the phone call feeling betrayed. "I was thinking," he recalls, "those sons of b*tches. I busted my *ss. I dropped everything I had. I walked away from everything I was doing. I thought I had done an incredibly good job at that time. In my head I thought I had." Garner says later that he feels cheated. "I was naive enough to think that I could get all this started and there would be such a groundswell among the Iraqis.... I thought, 'I've got everything going.' And all they were going to have to do is wait and see it come to fruition, and it's not going to take long for that to happen. What really got me is they never really announced what they were doing. Suddenly Bremer's coming and it looks like they fired me, which they may have. I think to the outside world I was seen as the envoy to Iraq, whatever you want to call it, the first governor and all that. Inside the administration, inside Defense, I was seen as a mechanic. 'We hired this guy.' I certainly never had the status I had to the outside world." - Bremer had been interviewed by both Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby for the job, and both told him that Garner had never been intended to be the permanent head of the reconstruction effort. They needed someone who had experience in diplomacy and politics, and that wasn't Garner.
- When Garner tells General John Abizaid about Bremer's impending arrival, Abizaid is stunned. "What the hell are they doing this for?" he asks. Garner doesn't know. General David McKiernan is surprised. Margaret Tutwiler is shocked. "Can you believe this?" Robin Raphael exclaims. Even Rumsfeld's deputy, Larry DiRita, is surprised, though more at what he calls the left-footed way it is being handled than the decision to replace Garner. "Paul, this is not good," he tells Paul Wolfowitz. The message is obvious: Garner is a failure. "I mean, it's a problem. Somebody needs to go out today and explain what the hell is going on." But no one does. Garner tells the unofficial presidential envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, of Bremer's arrival and his departure. Khalilzad retorts, "Then I'm quitting." Garner advises him to stay, but Khalilzad does just what he says -- quits. He would return two years later as the US ambassador to Iraq. Garner makes one last phone call to Rumsfeld, asking for Bremer's arrival to be delayed several months. "I have a lot of things on the fire and I think I can get them all done by the first of July," he says. Rumsfeld replies, "I can't do that. That's not my call."
- Bremer has just over two weeks from the time he accepts the position to his departure for Iraq. Reporter Bob Woodward writes, "In essence, he was putting together a new pickup team to take the place of Garner's pickup team. The issue that would likely define the Bush presidency was being handled by a series of pickup teams." Bremer also forwards a draft of a study lead by the RAND Corporation's James Dobbins, the eminent post-conflict expert, which recommends around 500,000 troops needed in Iraq to successfully rebuild the country after the overthrow of Hussein, to Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld never responds, and Bremer never follows up. The US will occupy Iraq with less than a third that number.
- That same day Bush lavishes praise on Garner during a speech in Lima, Ohio, at a campaign-style stop at an M1 Abrams battle tank factory. "We've followed up with a team of people, headed by this man Garner who's got one overriding goal, to leave a free nation in the hands of a free people." Bush praises the M1 tank as "the most safe vehicle for our fighting personnel, precise enough to protect innocent life." 900 M1s had been deployed in Iraq. Rumsfeld calls Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card after Bush's speech to complain about the selection of an Abrams tank factory for Bush's stop. The M1 is a symbol of the past, Rumsfeld grouses, not the light, quick, transformational weapon of the future. Bush is sending the wrong message, Rumsfeld tells Card. They should speak with one voice: transformation. This wouldn't have happened when Rumsfeld was chief of staff, he says. Card is astounded. Rumsfeld is out of control, he thinks. Unlike the other secretaries, whom Card can call and get them more or less together on message behind Bush, Rumsfeld is far too independent, dangerously so. (Bob Woodward)
- April 24: George W. Bush says in an interview with Tom Brokaw on NBC,
Iraq war and occupation
"We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some [WMDs], perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them." (Talking Proud, Democratic Underground) - April 24: Responding to news that Shi'ite Muslims are forming resistance organizations and planning to establish themselves as the leaders of any new Iraqi government,
Iraq war and occupation
along with the ferocity of anti-American rhetoric throughout Iraq, press secretary Ari Fleischer dismisses the reports as "the message of a few" and asserts that most Iraqis are "experiencing the joy of being liberated." (David Corn) - April 24: The "shock and awe" offensive that was planned to stun the Iraqi military into collapse failed to do so; Bush admits it in the same interview on NBC.
Iraq war and occupation
"Shock and awe said to many people that all we've got to do is unleash some might and people will crumble," he says. "And it turns out the fighters were a lot fiercer than we thought. ...The resistance for our troops moving south and north was significant resistance." (Consortium News, Talking Proud) - April 24: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal presidential advisor and staunch neoconservative, blames the State Department for the failed diplomacy and the ideological warfare within the administration.
Iraq war and occupation
"The State Department is back at work pursuing policies that will clearly throw away all of the fruits of hard-won victory" in Iraq, he tells an audience at the American Enterprise Institute. Deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage responds, "It's clear that Mr. Gingrich is off his meds and out of therapy." (Bob Woodward)
- April 25: Ex-CIA analysts speculate that the Bush administration might "plant" WMDs in Iraq to prove that Iraq indeed possessed such weapons.
Prewar intelligence on Iraq
They cite the planting of Soviet arms in Guatemala in 1954, the "discovery" of which was used as reason for the CIA overthrow of the sitting government in that country; they also cite evidence proving that Alabama Air National Guard planes, not renegade Cuban Air Force planes, were responsible for air attacks on Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961; the Tonkin Gulf hoax that Lyndon Johnson used to justify escalating the US military presence in Vietnam; the numerous hoaxes and fabrications employed by the Reagan/Bush administrations in Latin America; and the faked testimony in 1991 of Iraqi atrocities in Kuwaiti hospitals, along with faked satellite photos of Iraqi troop buildups, that helped shore up UN and American support for the Persian Gulf War. (Common Dreams) - April 25: Documents are found in a Baghdad house belonging to Qusay Hussein that show $10 million of Iraqi money was given to Labour MP George Galloway, an outspoken opponent of PM Tony Blair and a critic of the Iraq invasion.
Conservative smear campaigns
On June 20, the Christian Science Monitor, which along with the Daily Telegraph broke the story, will confirm that the documents are forgeries. The question of who created the forgeries and planted them in the remains of the house to be found by reporters remains to be answered, though psyops expert Colonel Sam Gardiner asks, "Who has anything to gain? Is this part of the pattern of punishment?" (Christian Science Monitor, Christian Science Monitor, Amy Goodman and David Goodman) - April 25: Thomas White, the former Enron executive, resigns in a cloud of scandal as Secretary of the Army.
Republican corruption
White was named to the post through the auspices of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who insisted on having corporate officials and not military generals heading the various armed forces; he also had Grumman's John Roche named to head the Air Force, and General Dynamic's Gordon England as Secretary of the Navy. White, a Vietnam veteran with the Army, took the position of Secretary of the Army in May 2001, after heading the Enron Engineering and Construction Company, which was implicated in the 2000-2001 California energy crisis and the graft of tens of millions of illegal profit for Enron. White used his experience at Enron procuring military contracts to set up similar contracts for friendly corporations as Army Secretary. In late October 2001, after numerous phone calls to Enron's Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, White unloaded a huge amount of Enron stock, pocketing $12 million, just before the Enron stock price collapsed and the company announced its imminent bankruptcy. White had promised that, upon his investiture as Secretary of the Army, he would immediately divest himself of any interest in Enron, but as late as January 2002, he still held 50,000 stock options and received an annuity from the company. Along with his stock investments, he was excoriated for using military jets to fly himself and his wife on personal trips. - White lied to the Senate Commerce Commitee in July 2002, denying any involvement in the California energy debacle, and was portrayed as having helped plan the Iraq invasion as part of a Bush administration scheme to divert attention from the wave of corporate scandals flooding the administration. The president of Public Citizen, Joan Claybrook, told the BBC that "the Bush administration is using the whole issue of Iraq as a smokescreen to cover corporate sleaze. The corporate crime wave was dominating the newspapers and on television and they had to change the subject. The only option was war. It has sucked all the air out of the media and so it has trumped all these other issues." But White began to fall out of favor with Rumsfeld and other Bush officials, most significantly over the issue of the $11 billion Crusader system, a 42-ton self-propelled howitzer that was too big to be carried by any of the military's cargo planes and could not move without a bulldozer in front of it smashing down vegetation and landform obstacles to create a clear path. White butted heads with Defense Department officials, including Paul Wolfowitz and Pete Aldridge, who insisted that the Crusader project be terminated; instead, White lobbied Congress to keep the project viable. Pentagon chief spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said, "Rumsfeld expected army leaders to get fully behind the decision to eliminate the Crusader program but instead was confronted with comments and 'talking points' sent to members of Congress aimed at undercutting the move." Rumsfield opened a probe into the incident; when asked whether Rumsfeld still had full confidence in White, Clarke replied, "He has confidence they will get to the bottom of this," and added, "Those who are responsible for any inappropriate behavior, if we discover that, they will be held accountable." White resigns instead of face the probe. Interestingly, in a contract negotiated by, among others, the Carlyle Group's James Baker, the Pentagon is spending the $450 million already budgeted for the Crusader to the contractor, Carlyle's United Defense, for not building the howitzer. In Defense Department parlance, this is called "winding down."
- White later co-authors a book, Reconstructing Eden, in which he continues to criticize the administration, saying of its plan for the 2003 iof Iraq that "it is quite clear in the immediate aftermath of hostilities that the plan for winning the peace is totally inadequate. Clearly the view that the war to 'liberate' Iraq would instantly produce a pro-United States citizenry ready for economic ad political rebirth ignored harsh realities on the ground." White is succeeded by Acting Secretary Les Brownlee, a decorated military veteran and former staff member of Republican lawmakers Strom Thurmond and John Warner, who himself resigns in December 2004. Brownlee will be succeeded by Westinghouse executive Francis Harvey. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Greg Palast)
- April 25: A Norwegian newspaper publishes pictures of armed US soldiers forcing Iraqi men to walk naked through a park.
US torture allegations
On the chests of the men had been scrawled an Arabic phrase that translates as "Ali Baba Haram" -- Arabic for "dirty thief, he stole." A military spokesman confirms that the actions took place, but defend them by claiming that the victims were captured looters. The spokesman said that such punishments will continue. A number of human rights organizations have protested the actions, pointing out that such punishments are direct contraventions of the Geneva Convention agreements. A witness to one such proceeding says, "This is a disgusting way to treat people without trying them. How do we know these men were thieves? Even if they were, this is no way to treat them. If this is US democracy, they can keep it. It's just another way of keeping people in their place. I believe it will cause big trouble." Amnesty International said: "It was an appalling way to treat prisoners. Such degrading treatment is a clear violation of US responsibilities." (The Memory Hole) - April 25: Mike Cerre, an ABC correspondent and Globe TV producer, tells of a moving experience he had speaking at his daughter's high school about the war on this date.
Antiwar protests
His daughter is an active member of the antiwar Peace and Justice Coalition in Marin County, California, and Cerre wanted to ensure that her colleagues got the straight story about what was really happening in Iraq. Cerre speaks to his daughter's school about his experiences in Iraq: "I talked to them in the context that these Marines were their age who, right or wrong, had made a commitment to do something, were doing something, and were making great sacrifices, and that if they wanted to oppose the war, fine, but they have to make sacrifices equal to those guys who are involved it in, or else they didn't count as far as I was concerned. I think they were impressed by the selflessness of these Marines -- their maturity and their sense of commitment -- and which is sometimes hard to find in kids this age. They understood that they were living through a part of history, and this was not a time to be sitting on the sidelinesm if they were for or against it, they ought to be involved because it was an important part of history. Whatever else they had going on in their lives, it could not be as important as what these guys were experiencing and what the country was going through. My daughter's still very much opposed to the war and the reason behind it and the decision to do it, but she also has the ultimate respect for the troops, which is something that was different during the Vietnam era." (Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson)
April 25: "Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?" -- Fox News "liberal" Alan Colmes, quoted by Dave Zweifel
- April 26: The US and Britain co-sponsor a UN Security Council resolution that drastically limits the UN's role in managing post-war Iraq, instead recognizing the US-led coalition occupation as the sole authority in Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
The resolution, which passes after bitter opposition from Germany and France among others, also gives the US and Britain sole control of Iraqi oil revenues. While Tony Blair once advocated a UN-managed "trust fund" for Iraqi oil profits that would ensure Iraqi oil money would be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people, in reality the oil revenues are being spent at the US's and Britain's discretion; much of the money is going for compensation for the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. (Independent, Guardian) - April 26: The right-wing news media, starting with a report on NewsMax, blows an encounter between liberal pundit Al Franken and members of Fox News tremendously out of proportion.
Conservative media slant
The venue is the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, where Franken is a guest of US News and World Report. During a performance by Ray Charles, Franken journeys over to the cluster of Fox tables to chat with Alan Colmes, and during their discussion asks Colmes if he isn't "laying down" by refusing to confront Colmes's co-host Sean Hannity about Hannity's numerous lies and misstatements. Suddenly Fox sports anchor Brian Kilmeade, twenty years younger than Franken, accosts Franken, accusing him of "bothering" Colmes; the potentially ugly confrontation defuses when someone else from the Fox tables asks the two for a photo of them together, and Franken tosses an arm around Kilmeade and tells him to smile. Later on during the dinner, Franken takes a few snipes at fellow guests Karl Rove, Richard Perle, Donald Evans, and Paul Wolfowitz, who replies to Franken's remark that "the Clinton military did a great job in Iraq, didn't it?" by snapping, "F*ck off." Two days later, NewsMax prints an interesting account of the evening based on Kilmeade's take on events, portraying Franken as drunk and belligerent, "uncontrollable" and almost "deranged," and accosting an entire table of Fox personnel. Internet gossipmonger Matt Drudge says that Franken was bleeding from the chin after the encounter, though, according to Kilmeade, no punches were thrown; in reality, Drudge had seen Franken at the beginning of the dinner, while Franken was blotting a shaving cut on his chin. (NewsMax/Tedd Keever, Al Franken)
- April 28: General James "Spider" Marks, the head of the US task force to locate Iraq's WMDs, in a moment of frustration, blames General Tommy Franks's CENTCOM for his inability to locate a single WMD at any of the sites listed or "discovered" by human intelligence.
Iraq war and occupation
Marks writes of CENTCOM in his personal diary, "They are completely asleep at the switch. No one anticipated or executed on the req[uirements] to get details of WMD. How idiotic are these guys! Incredible!" - The same day, Marks learns that the DIA is taking over the hunt for WMDs. The Iraq Survey Group, as the new organization is to be called, will be headed by General Keith Dayton, the DIA's head of human intelligence. Marks tells Dayton that he is going to have a massive coordination problem, but if you have the authority from Rumsfeld's office, you'll be able to succeed where Marks and his task force had failed. "When you come," he tells Dayton, "make sh*t happen." (Bob Woodward)
- April 28: Claude Allen, the deputy secretary of HHS, a law partner with James Baker's law firm Baker Botts, and a former deputy attorney general of Virginia, is nominated by Bush for the federal appeals bench.
Partisan Bush appointees
Allen is well known for saying, as a member of Senator Jesse Helms's re-election campaign in 1984, that their Democratic opponent was vulnerable because of his links with "the queers." Allen is a hotly partisan anti-abortion activist who has worked to keep rape victims from receiving state assistance in receiving abortions. He also helped craft Virginia's abstinence-only sex education policy, and from his post at HHS, has worked to undermine international efforts to combat AIDS. Allen is a board member of Peacemaker Ministries, which has worked to defend clergy members from sexual abuse charges. After a contentious hearing in October 2003, he will not be confirmed, and Bush so far has failed to renominate him for the bench. (Independent Judiciary, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
Bush orders US troops to leave Saudi Arabia
- April 29: Bush quietly orders all American troops out of Saudi Arabia, giving what terrorist Osama bin Laden has been demanding since April of 1996 -- all US troops out of the "holy land" that is the location of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities of Islam.
US military
Days later, on May 1, Bush will strut onto the flight deck of the USS Lincoln to announce "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. "That's astonishing," writes investigative journalist Greg Palast. "Until George W. Bush, the United States of America has never, ever, removed all our military bases from a foreign land no matter how much locals b*tched or moaned. We even keep troops in Okinawa over the island's strong objections, and World War II ended sixty years ago. ...Bush was correct in announcing, 'Mission Accomplished.' However, it was not America's mission that was accomplished. It was Osama's." (Greg Palast) - April 29: In Karachi, Pakistani police arrest Taqfiq bin Attash and Amar al-Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Islamist terrorism
Bin Attash is a close friend of Osama bin Laden, lost a leg during the fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and ran the October 2001 attack on the USS Cole. Al-Balushi had sent almost $120,000 to Mohammed Atta, the main pilot in the 9/11 attacks. (Michael Scheuer)
- April 30: US troops fire on an unarmed crowd of protestors in Fallujah, killing two and wounding three.
Iraq war and occupation
Embedded authors Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson describe Fallujah as a "viper's nest of Saddam loyalists and Syrian, Jordanian, and Saudi terrorists...a symbol of Iraqi resistance and continual flashpoint for guerrilla attacks on American soldiers in postwar Iraq." The London Daily Mirror has two unilateral reporters, Chris Hughes and Julian Andrews, on the scene. Hughes believes the crowd was angry and unruly, but not armed, and posed no threat to the soldiers. He notes that 15 demonstrators had been shot and killed by troops two days before, and the crowds were savagely angry. "Locals were claiming lots of things," Hughes says later. "One of the claims they made was that one of the houses had been entered by US troops and was looted. So I asked the guy, 'Would you swear on the Koran that this is true? And in front of the photographer?' Then there was intense negotiation between the translator, who is a Shi'a, and this guy. He then started backtracking a lot -- as you can imagine." - Of the demonstrators, he says, "About a thousand people were gathered there. They were four deep, one hundred meters long. They were very angry, very agitated, whipped up into a frenzy by religious leaders, but they weren't armed. I've seen more violent demonstrations in London. Anyway, they walked to the US base.... The troops retreated but their guns were aiming at the crowd. So then a couple of kids ran forward and they were throwing their sandals at the troops. None of this was violent. It was intense because the soldiers were quite clearly on edge and appeared scared, even though I wouldn't see their eyes because they had goggles on. They were all camo'd up. Then by a bit of a coincidence a three-vehicle army convoy went past to the Ba'ath Party former headquarters, which was now occupied by US troops in Fallujah. The last of these vehicles was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Then something happened. Somebody threw something at the Bradley, and the guy in the back of the Bradley opened fire. He put his thumb on the machine gun. We took a picture of that in the Mirror. People were screaming, shouting. People ducking for cover. We ran to the wall to get away from it. We were between the Bradley and the wall. By which time, the Bradley was gone. The twenty-second burst of automatic fire was gone. I later learned two died. I only saw one dead. His head was blown off. You don't need to know the details. Basically the soldier opened fire, but the Army claimed afterward that they were shot at by an AK-47. But I was in the crowd minutes earlier and I didn't see one gun, which is unusual for Iraqis. I didn't see a gun, or a knife, or a stick, Just those sandals and banners, lots of banners." Andrews took his photos to an ex-Special Forces advisor who walked him through the way the Bradley machine guns work. The photos prove that, contrary to Army claims, the gunner deliberately fired. "[W]e are talking large rounds at virtually point-blank range. It was absolutely appalling. As a photographer, I think I made some small difference. Perhaps in a month's or a year's time, a military academy in America will say, 'This is what went wrong in one town in Iraq. This is how not to do it.' They will be able to say that because we were there." (Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson)
- April 30: In a request for information about Halliburton's business practices, Representative Henry Waxman writes to Donald Rumsfeld,
Halliburton
"Since at least the 1980's, federal laws have prohibited U.S. companies from doing business in one or more of these countries. Yet Halliburton appears to have sought to circumvent these restrictions by setting up subsidiaries in foreign countries and territories such as the Cayman Islands. These actions started as early as 1984; they appear to have continued during the period between 1995 and 2000, when Vice President Cheney headed the company; and they are apparently ongoing even today." Waxman's requests for information bear little fruit. (New York Times/Bernie Sanders)
US forces find documents detailing plans for post-Saddam insurgency
- Late April: A Lebanese translator shows Colonel Paul Hughes, part of Jay Garner's staff, a one-page directive issued by Saddam Hussein's intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.
Iraq war and occupation
The directive lists eleven things the Mukhabarat would do "in the event, God forbid, of the fall of our beloved leader." Each local Ba'ath cell, each squad of Fedayeen, and each individual Mukhabarat agent would be responsible for assassinating collaborators, burning the ministry buildings, looting, burning public documents, and other things that would lead to chaos. The document says nothing of sectarian violence or exploiting the divisions between Shi'ites, Kurds, and Sunnis, but leaves it up to the individual agents of the Ba'ath Party to decide how best to spread violence and chaos through the countryside. Hughes is stunned; the document shows that the US and coalition forces are up against far more than they counted on. In his book, Paul Bremer later writes of being shown a similar document from January 2003, offering contingency plans for the events following an overthrow of Hussein. "Burn this office," the memo read, listed strategies of "sabotage and looting," and ordered subordinates to "scatter agents to every town. Destroy electric power stations. Infiltrate the mosques, the Shi'ite holy places." (Bob Woodward) - Late April: Iraqi television complains of US censorship, including efforts to stop the broadcasting of passages from the Koran, and purging news reports that reflect badly on the occupying American military.
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
"[Canadian broadcaster and Iraqi media advisor Dan] North said the U.S.-led administration's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) had requested the station's news programs be reviewed by the wife of Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader and a major figure in the postwar politics of Iraq. 'Could you imagine a political leader being able to check the content of any Western media?' North said." (Reuters/Common Dreams) - Late April: A Christian fundamentalist corporation, Grace Digital Media, is hired to produce US-backed Iraqi satellite TV broadcasting, in a format to be dubbed "Grace News Network."
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
GDM is extremely pro-Israel, very conservative and evangelical, and describes itself as "dedicated to transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today." According to GDM, it "will be reporting the current secular news, along with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the news' to reflect the Kingdom of God and its purposes." (AlterNet) - Late April: After visiting wounded American soldiers, Bush says, "I reminded
Iraq war and occupation
them and their families that the war in Iraq is really about peace." (Rampton & Sheldon/AlterNet) - Late April: During a class discussion at an Oakland High School classroom, two students make comments that their teacher interprets as threatening towards Bush.
Attack on civil liberties
The teacher informs the FBI; the next day, two agents appear at the school, and interview each student for an hour and a half, with the principal present but without notifying the students' parents. "He asked us questions like was I a good shooter...was I a good sniper...am I good dealing with guns, and what are my thoughts on the president," recalls one of the students. "I was very scared. I was crying because of what they said to us." Other such "tips" have resulted in FBI appearances, including their June interrogation of an Atlanta bookstore employee, Marc Schultz, who found himself visited by FBI agents after someone spotted him reading an article titled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity" at a local coffee shop. Schultz says the agents told him: "There's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now, if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that." FBI agents have confirmed that they "routinely" monitor the Web sites of newspapers and other news sites; after 9/11, they demanded the visitor logs from one progressive news site in San Francisco. City police in Denver and Chicago, among other cities, are conducting heavy surveillance of anti-war and peace advocacy groups, including making videotapes of rallies, noting license plate numbers, intercepting e-mails, and even infiltrating such groups. One ACLU spokesman says, "What we're seeing again today is a pattern across the country. This isn't a kind of random response. This is clearly part of affirmative policies to engage in these kinds of activities." The Justice Department also advises police officers in some states to gather information on "enemies in our own backyard." In a police training manual titled "A Police Response to Terrorism in the Heartland: Integrating Law Enforcement Intelligence and Community Policing," officers are encouraged to investigate members of the "Green Movement" -- defined as "environmental activism that is aimed at political and social reform with the explicit attempt to develop environmental-friendly policy, law and behavior." It is hard to draw connections between such groups and terrorist organizations. (In These Times, Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
