December 2003: Week Four: Page Two: This Far and No Further

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December 25: An article by author and expert on militant Islam Peter Bergen attempts to explain exactly what the shadowy terrorist group al-Qaeda is, and what it isn't.
Islamist terrorism
Bergen writes, "[T]here is a great deal of ambiguity about what exactly constitutes al Qaeda. Is it a terrorist organization run in a regimented top-down fashion by its CEO, Osama bin Laden? Or is it a loose-knit group of Islamist militants around the world whose only common link is that many of them trained in Afghanistan? Or has al Qaeda, the organization, morphed into something best described as al Qaeda, the movement -- a movement defined by adherence to bin Laden's virulent anti-Westernism/anti-Semitism and propensity for violence? Is 'al Qaeda' all of the above?"
Bergen begins to answer his own questions: "First there is al-Qaeda, the organization. Most non-specialists are surprised to learn that al-Qaeda has only 200 to 300 members. These are the men who have sworn bayat, an oath of allegiance to serve their emir, or leader, bin Laden, even unto death. (It is al-Qaeda, the organization, that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.) The second concentric ring spreading out beyond the inner core of al-Qaeda consists of perhaps several thousand 'holy warriors' trained in the group's Afghan camps in the terrorist black arts of bomb making and assassination. Beyond this circle are tens of thousands of militants who received some kind of basic military training in Afghanistan over the past decade. Many of these trainees went to Afghanistan for what amounted to little more than a jihad vacation. Most were to be cannon fodder in the Taliban's war against the Northern Alliance. Think John Walker Lindh. Finally, untold numbers of Muslims around the world subscribe to bin Laden's Manichean worldview that the West is the enemy of Islam. Some of these, too, may be prepared to do violence. The investigations of the recent terror attacks in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iraq are ongoing, but already it seems that all of the various 'al-Qaedas' described above had some role in the attacks. In the case of the Nov. 8 bombing in Riyadh, Saudi officials say al-Qaeda itself planned the attacks. This is plausible, as al-Qaeda had already struck in Riyadh in May in a series of attacks that killed 34 people. In the case of the Nov. 12 attacks in Nasiriya, Iraq, that were directed at the Italian presence there, Italy's defense minister, Antonio Martino, has said that Saddam Hussein loyalists and al-Qaeda members were to blame. The Nasiriya attack, then, is not the work of al-Qaeda itself but of the wider circle of jihadists affiliated with al-Qaeda who will cooperate with groups on the ground with purely local interests such as Hussein loyalists.
"The attacks on synagogues in Istanbul Nov. 15 were carried out by two Turks. Afterward a group called the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades claimed responsibility. Abu Hafs is the nom de guerre of al-Qaeda's former military commander, who was killed by a US airstrike in Afghanistan in November 2001. The synagogue attacks seem, then, to have been carried out by one of al-Qaeda's many affiliates, recruiting local talent on the ground to execute the operation. This also appears to be the case for subsequent attacks against a bank and the British consulate in Istanbul. These various attacks may well represent the future of 'al-Qaeda' operations: Some attacks will continue to be planned by the terrorist organization itself, others will be carried out by affiliate groups acting in the name of al-Qaeda and additional operations will be executed by local jihadists who have little or no direct connection to al-Qaeda. The last is perhaps the most worrisome development, because it suggests that al-Qaeda has successfully turned itself from an organization into a mass movement -- one that has been energized by the war in Iraq. President Bush reportedly keeps photos of the 20 or so top terrorists in his desk, and when one of them is apprehended or killed writes an X through his picture. That might work for a Mafia crime family: Arrest all the key members and the organization will disappear. But al-Qaeda is now a movement based on an ideology. Arresting a movement is quite a different proposition from arresting people." (Washington Post)

Massive and systematic profiteering and incompetence throughout corporate rebuilding project in Iraq

December 25: In a damning indictment of US coporate policy in Iraq, an Asia Times commentary reminds us of how most Iraqis are spending the Christmas season.
Iraq war and occupation
"At night, most of downtown Baghdad is still in darkness, with only the blue and red police sirens lighting the streets and the only sound that of intermittent gunfire puncturing the silence -- definitely not a picture of a festive, newly liberated capital. With most of Iraq suffering from power interruptions lasting an average of 16 hours daily, it's a little hard to party in the dark. ...South of the city, a double-columned queue of cars up to three kilometers in length snakes around street blocks and crosses a bridge over the Tigris, before finally terminating at a barbed wired gasoline station protected by a Humvee and an armored tank. Come closing time, so as not to abandon the queue and line up all over again the following day, most of the car owners decide to leave their vehicles parked overnight, in a nightly vigil for gasoline in a country with the world's second-largest reserves of oil. During the day, some of Iraq's 12 million unemployed hang out in front of Checkpoint 3 of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The chances of an American accepting their resumes is next to nil, but they come every day anyway. Others try their luck loitering in the hotel lobbies, besieging journalists or non-government workers in need of drivers and translators. With many unemployed former university professors, engineers and civil servants choosing to become cab drivers instead, Baghdad probably has the most educated taxi drivers per square kilometer in the world. Strike up a conversation and the cabbies will most likely tell you what seems to have become the conventional wisdom today: not even Saddam Hussein could have screwed up this badly. Not that they want him back, but neither could they have expected the occupation forces to completely bungle such simple tasks as switching the lights back on. The lack of power is most Iraqis' number one gripe, but the list is long: uninstalled phone lines, shoddily repaired schools, clogged roads, uncollected garbage, defective sewerage, a nonexistent bureaucracy, mass unemployment and widespread poverty -- the general chaos that Iraq is still in today. Iraqis are in broad agreement that life is deteriorating rather than improving. The prevailing sentiment is a complex mix of resentment and resignation, frustration and incredulity. On the one hand, Iraqis feel bitter about being occupied, and yet many are resigned to entrusting their day-to-day survival to the hands of the Americans. On the other hand, they could not quite believe how despite all the time and money, the world's sole superpower can't make the reconstruction process go right."
CPA coordinator Ted Morse notes that it takes time to get everything back up to speed: "...[T]here is an impatience in that people think it can be done immediately. It cannot." But the Iraqis themselves have proven that it can. After the devastation of the 1991 Gulf War, it took Iraq only three months to restore the country's electricity back to prewar levels. Iraqis want to know why, with all of the vaunted US resources and knowhow (including the involvement of Bechtel, the builders of the Hoover Dam), is Iraq only up to 20% of prewar electrical production? Naturally, there are reasons for the problems. At the top of the list is the resistance; it's tough to rewind copper coiling when bullets are being fired at your head. But other reasons are just as prominent. First among them is the sheer incompetence and lack of experience of the people running Iraq. "Much has been said about how the administrators housed in the Green Zone have little or no experience whatsoever in public administration. There have also been various reports about the confusion and lack of coordination among the different agencies involved. Moreover, as in previous colonial administrations, it is often difficult to entice the best and the brightest to pack up, leave everything behind, relocate to some far-flung hardship post, only to be welcomed with guns."
Another major part of the problem is the fact that much of the essential machinery used in Iraq is not only old and in dire need of repairs and replacement parts, but was largely made by firms in France, Germany, and Russia -- the very countries prohibited from doing business in Iraq today. Bechtel is the single firm authorized to do business with Iraq, and all too often Bechtel can't get compatible or even usable spare parts. "Awaiting urgent rehabilitation, Iraq's French, Russian, German and Japanese-made power infrastructure is slowly disintegrating. ...To finally end Iraq's crippling power shortage and to ensure that the turbines are not completely degraded, Bechtel should either quickly manufacture the required spare parts itself, a very long and very costly process, buy the spare parts from the Russian company directly, or hire the Russian firm as a sub-contractor. That, or they just allow the crumbling turbines to turn completely useless. Then they bid for building new billion-dollar power generators themselves."
But none of this is happening, and no one knows what Bechtel's plans for handling the imminent crisis are. Iraqi utilities managers say they are not being consulted at all regarding Iraq's strategic energy plans. Bechtel officials don't even bother to explain what's taking them so long to deliver the parts they need. "They just collect papers," says the head of Iraq's southern district oil ministry. And Bechtel isn't the only problem. Kellogg, Brown, & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary in charge of rehabilitating the oil infrastructure, isn't doing its job, either. Officials from the South Oil Company in Basra say they aren't aware of anything KBR has done to repair or rebuild its pipelines or machinery. "With Iraq's oil refineries still awaiting rehabilitation, Iraq cannot refine enough crude oil to meet domestic consumption. The US is instead exporting Iraq's crude oil and employing KBR under a no-bid cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to import gasoline from neighboring Turkey and Kuwait. Last week, an official Pentagon investigation revealed that KBR is charging the US government more than twice what others are paying for imported gasoline. What was left unsaid, however, is the conflict of interest inherent in hiring KBR for both the oil infrastructure reconstruction and the oil importation. If Iraq's pipelines and refineries were suddenly fully functional and Iraq was able to produce all the oil it needed, it would be the end of KBR's lucrative oil-importing business."
And there's more. Iraqi employees recently demonstrated outside of CPA headquarters in Baghdad, demanding 10 months' worth of back wages still unpaid. "We thank you because you saved our lives from Saddam. But we want to live so you should help us," says the group's unofficial spokesperson. "Paul Bremer promised us salaries. We heard it with our own ears. What happened to these promises?" Almost half of the new recruits for the Iraqi Army, which has been trained not by the US military but by Vinnell Corporation, have walked off after being refused pay raises from $50 a month to $120 a month. "The common refrain of the Iraqis who have chosen to work with the US-installed bureaucracy is that there is no quid pro quo. Pressed to explain the failure of his ministry to significantly increase power, for example, Iraq's electricity chief, Ayhem al-Samaraie, grudgingly admitted: 'I have no money in my ministry at all.' Indeed, a quick visual survey of Baghdad from the dirty streets, the aging machines and the raging workers to the unbelievably long lines for gasoline, makes this explanation for Iraq's reconstruction problems sound almost convincing. That the reconstruction effort is in shambles because there is no money almost seems plausible." But there is money, and plenty of it. It just isn't going into the work and into the infrastructure. So where is it going? Into the pockets of Bechtel, Halliburton, and the other US companies in Iraq, apparently.
"While the US finds it increasingly hard to raise funds for the occupation, there is still enough money for the most critical aspects of the reconstruction. Those profiting from it, however, are determined to keep the biggest share possible to themselves. The bottom-line of the reconstruction mess is the bottom-line: little gets done because contractors cannot see beyond the dollar sign. 'The profit motive is what brings companies to dangerous locations. But that is what capitalism is all about,' Richard Dowling, spokesperson of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that contracted Kellogg, Brown & Root, explained. 'If it takes profit to motivate an organization to take on a tough job, we can live with that. Yes, there's a profit motive but the result is the job gets done.' The problem is, as evidenced most clearly by the case of Bechtel and KBR, the job is not even getting half-done. Profit-maximization has not resulted in the most efficient restoration of power and oil production possible. On the contrary, it gets in the way of doing things right. The power plants will eventually be built and the oil refineries will run again, but not after unnecessary deprivation of the Iraqis and not after Bechtel has made the most of the opportunity. This war to liberate Iraq was never about liberating the Iraqis. Unsurprisingly then, the reconstruction effort is also not about reconstruction. In this occupation, the US and its allies' primary goal is not to rebuild what they have destroyed; it's to make a fast buck. Contractors like Bechtel and KBR are assured of getting paid no matter what; that the power plants will eventually be constructed is just incidental. They will be built in order to justify the pretext for the profit-making: that a war had to be waged and that everything that was destroyed now has to be rebuilt. As Stephen Bechtel, the company's founder, once made clear, 'We are not in the construction and engineering business. We are in the business of making money.'
"Billed as the biggest rebuilding effort since World War II, the reconstruction of Iraq is expected to cost $100 billion, some even say $200 billion. For the post-war contractors, this is not a reconstruction business; it is a hundred-billion-dollar bonanza. The US and its contractors are not even trying, for a simple reason: it's not the point. To assume that they are striving, but are merely failing because of factors beyond their control, is to presuppose that there is an earnest effort to succeed. There isn't. If there were, there should have been a coherent plan and process in which the welfare of the Iraqis -- and not of the corporations -- actually comes first. Instead, the Iraqis' need for electricity comes after Bechtel's need for billion-dollar projects. The Iraqis' need for decent living wages becomes relevant only after Halliburton has maximized its profits. Indeed, if there were a sincere attempt to succeed, the US, as the responsible occupying power, should have had no qualms giving Iraqis what many emphatically say they need to finally make things work: the authority and the resources. 'If only the money and spare parts were provided,' electricity official Jasim said, 'we could do a surgical operation.' 'If I'm going to do it without KBR, I can do it,' said al-Khshab. 'We have been doing this for the past 30 years without KBR. Give me the money and give me the proper authority and I'll do it.' But the US won't because who knows what the Iraqis would do? Ask the Russians to repair their power plants? Actually succeed in reconstructing their country without the involvement of Bechtel and Halliburton? ...As the reconstruction process continues to disillusion Iraqis, the myth that the US is here to help is also steadily collapsing. With no light, no gasoline and no paychecks, more and more Iraqis are no longer just cursing the darkness. 'If you want to live in peace, Americans, give us our salary,' warned Hassim, the Iraqi protesting at the gates of the Coalition Provisional Authority. 'If you do not, next time we'll come back with weapons.'" (Asia Times)

December 26: A fourth prosecutor has been added to the team investigating the administration leak that outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, and the FBI says a grand jury may be called to take testimony from administration officials.
Plame outing
Administration and CIA officials say they have seen signs in the past few weeks that the investigation continues intensively behind closed doors, even though little about the investigation has been publicly said or seen for months. FBI agents apparently started their White House questioning with top figures, including President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, and then worked down to more junior officials. The agents appear to have a great deal of information and have constructed detailed chronologies of various officials' possible tie to the leak. The Justice Department has added a prosecutor specializing in counterintelligence, joining two other counterintelligence prosecutors and one from Justice's Public Integrity section. But the CIA believes that people in the administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, who was exposed as a CIA officer by unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by conservative columnist Robert Novak. Some administration officials say they believe charges will eventually result, although it could be as long from now as 2005. A Republican legal source who has had detailed conversations about the matter with White House officials said he "doesn't get any sense at all that they're worried or concerned, or that they're covering up." Apparently the administration wants the findings to either emerge soon, or not to come out until after the November elections. The legal source says, "The only fear I've heard expressed is that the investigation will be too slow or too fast and will kick into a visible mode in a way that is poorly timed for the election. If they prosecuted someone tomorrow, I don't think the White House would care. And they can do it in December 2004. They just don't want it to become an issue in the election." (Washington Post)
December 26: As Afghanistan's loya jirga prepares a constitution for the war-torn country, tribal elders and lawmakers worry that the constitution will be irrelevent even if adopted, because of a failure or an inability to enforce its strictures.
War in Afghanistan
"Writing a constitution on a piece of paper isn't important," says tribal elder Abdul Ahad Madimah. "What is really important is that the constitution should be implemented. It must bring changes to people's lives. ...My province is full of Taliban, and they are growing stronger every day. If we can't show results to the people, they will...all turn against the government." How the constitution's vague provisions for rights and freedoms will be enforced in a country that has no functioning judicial system is not clear. "It's my biggest concern," says Fatima Gailani, a member of the commission that drew up the draft constitution. "This constitution will achieve a lot if it's implemented. If even 70 percent of it is implemented, it will make a huge difference. But how? If there are people in power who don't want to follow it, there's nothing we can do." The new draft constitution enshrines human rights, equalities and freedoms that Afghans have never enjoyed in the past, but so loosely as to make the provisions almost meaningless, legal experts say. Outside of the capital city of Kabul, justice is enforced, not by police, but by tribal militias or by citizens themselves. Since there are no courts, local mullahs often dispense justice, often arbitrarily or by religious or tribal standards instead of by legal standards. (Chicago Tribune)
December 26: Paul Bremer has appointed an 11-man "Program Review Board" to allocate money for Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
The board consists of Americans, Britons and Australians -- one Iraqi sits on the board, but due to "scheduling conflicts" he has attended only one of 20 meetings -- and uses Iraqi money that includes oil revenue and seized assets from the Hussein era to pay for projects not anticipated by the country's budget. So far the board has approved more than $4 billion in such spending. The spending is done privately, with little outside reporting and no accountability except to itself and to Bremer, who has unilateral veto power. The PRB is one example of the strict secrecy budget and fund allocations are handled with in Iraq. Despite detailed regulations and pronouncements about 'transparency,' the Coalition Provisional Authority's process for spending Iraq's money has little of the openness, debate and paper trails that define such groups in democratic nations. Though the interim government has extensive information on its Web site, it doesn't include, for example, when contracts have been awarded. Citing security concerns, it also doesn't say what companies won them. An international monitoring board, set up when the United Nations transferred money from the oil-for-food program to the occupation authority, is supposed to audit the Program Review Board's work. But its formation was delayed for months and it is still being organized. It held its second meeting Monday. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has yet to appoint an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority, as Congress mandated. Meetings of the review board aren't public and there are no transcripts. Hence billions of dollars are being spent, much of these dollars going to private contracts with American corporations, with no records or accountability either to the Iraqi or American peoples. (Washington Post)
December 26: Robert Parry points out that, while few of the Bush administration officials in charge of the Iraq war actually have military experience,
Iraq war and occupation
many of them played key roles in the repression of leftist peasant uprisings in Central America in the '80s, a set of lessons they are trying to apply to the violent resistance in Iraq. Parry writes, "The key counterinsurgency lesson from Central America was that the US government can defeat guerrilla movements if it is willing to back a local power structure, no matter how repulsive, and if Washington is ready to tolerate gross human rights abuses. In Central America in the '80s, those tactics included genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages in Guatemala's highlands and the torture, rape and murder of thousands of young political activists throughout the region. ...The body dumps that have been unearthed across Central America are thus little different from the mass graves blamed on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, except in Central America they represented the dark side of US foreign policy and received far less US press scrutiny. Another lesson learned from the '80s was the importance of shielding the American people from the ugly realities of a US-backed 'dirty war' by using PR techniques, which became known inside the Reagan administration as 'perception management.' The temptation to recycle these counterinsurgency strategies from Central America to Iraq is explained by the number of Reagan-era officials now back in prominent roles in George W. Bush's administration. They include Elliot Abrams, who served as assistant secretary of state for Latin America in the '80s and is a National Security Council adviser to Bush on the Middle East; John Negroponte, US ambassador to Honduras in the '80s and now Bush's UN Ambassador; Paul Bremer a counter-terrorism specialist in the '80s and Iraq's civilian administrator today; Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was the senior military adviser to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in the '80s; and Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a Republican foreign-policy stalwart in Congress two decades ago."
Bremer's choice to disband the standing Iraqi army hasn't played well with this strategy; US control in Central American countries relied heavily on the use of already-established armies ready and able to carry out US directives. Parry writes, "Now, with US casualties mounting, the Bush administration is scrambling to build an Iraqi paramilitary force to serve under the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council's interior minister. The core of this force would be drawn from the security and intelligence wings of five political organizations, including Ahmad Chalabi's formerly exile-based Iraqi National Congress. Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on November 10 that the administration's No. 1 strategy in Iraq is to build an Iraqi security force, which she claims already numbers about 118,000 people, roughly the size of the US military contingent in Iraq. Many of these Iraqis have received speeded-up training with the goal of using them to pacify the so-called Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad. Earlier, some US officials, including civilian administrator Bremer, balked at a paramilitary force out of fear it would become a tool of repression. 'The unit that the Governing Council wants to create would be the most powerful domestic security force in Iraq, fueling concern among some US officials that it could be used for undemocratic purposes, such as stifling political dissent, as such forces do in other Arab nations,' the Washington Post wrote. But faced with the rising US death toll, Bremer no longer has 'any objection in principle' to this concept, a senior US official told the Post. ...With all the missteps that have plagued the US occupation, Bremer appears to understand that the Iraqi security situation needs to be bolstered —- and quickly."
If past experience is any measure, the Bush administration is willing to accept a staggering death toll in Iraq if it will mean gaining control of the country. Parry observes, "The death toll in El Salvador was estimated at about 70,000 people. In Guatemala, the number of dead reached about 200,000, including what a truth commission concluded was a genocide against the Mayan populations in Guatemala's highlands. The muted press coverage that the US news media has given these atrocities as they have come to light over the years also showed the residual strength of the 'perception management' employed by the Reagan administration. For instance, even when the atrocities of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt are mentioned, as they were in the context of his defeat in Guatemala's November 9 presidential elections, the history of Reagan's warm support for Rios Montt is rarely, if ever, noted by the US press. While the slaughter of the Mayans was underway in the '80s, Reagan portrayed Gen. Rios Montt and the Guatemalan army as victims of disinformation spread by human rights groups and journalists. Reagan huffily discounted reports that Rios Montt's army was eradicating hundreds of Mayan villages. On December 4, 1982, after meeting with Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as 'totally dedicated to democracy' and declared that Rios Montt's government had been 'getting a bum rap.' Reagan also reversed President Jimmy Carter's policy of embargoing military equipment to Guatemala over its human rights abuses. Carter's human rights embargoes represented one of the few times during the Cold War when Washington objected to the repression that pervaded Central American society."
Parry believes that the horrific excesses and repression best documented in Guatamala, with US-trained "death squads" roaming the countryside and killing thousands of civilians, will be repeated in Iraq. He notes that "[s]ome supporters of Bush's invasion of Iraq in March are now advocating an iron fist to quell the growing Iraqi resistance. In a debate in Berkeley, California, for instance, ardent Bush supporter Christopher Hitchens declared that the US intervention in Iraq needed to be 'more thoroughgoing, more thought-out and more, if necessary, ruthless.' ...Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, told a news conference in Baghdad on November 11 that US forces would follow a new get-tough strategy against the Iraqi resistance. 'We are taking the fight into the safe havens of the enemy, in the heartland of the country,' Sanchez said. ...As the United States wades deeper into this Iraqi quicksand, the lessons of the bloody counterinsurgency wars in Central America will be tempting to the veterans of the Reagan administration. Those lessons certainly are the most immediate antecedents to many of the architects of the Iraq counterinsurgency. ...Perhaps one of the lessons of the current dilemma is that George W. Bush may have dug such a deep hole for US policy in Iraq that even Guatemalan-style brutality applied to the Sunni Triangle would only deepen the well of anti-Americanism that already exists in many parts of Iraq and across much of the Islamic world." (In These Times)
December 26: The Pentagon is forbidding Army soldiers to use armor manufactured by a local steelmaker for their Humvees and large trucks in Iraq because it wasn't authorized through proper Pentagon channels.
Iraq war and occupation
The soldiers in question, members of the 428th Transportation Company, have been unable to obtain any armor for their vehicles; they are scheduled for deployment in January. Major Gary Tallman, a Pentagon spokesman for Army weapons and technology issues, says, "It's important that other units out there that are getting ready to mobilize understand that we are doing things" to protect them, "but there's policy you have to consider before you go out on your own and try to do something." The possibility that soldiers could be denied extra protection because of an Army policy has outraged some of the friends and neighbors who helped the Jefferson City, Missouri-based unit. "I think it's the stupidest thing I ever heard of," says Virgil Kirkweg, owner of a Jefferson City steel company, which rushed to meet the reserve unit's armor request. "I just hope the government is not dumb enough to make them go out there without something that's going to protect them somewhat." The 72 vehicles operated by the 428th are not designed for battle. They have thin metal floorboards and, in some cases, a canvas covering for doors. Iraqi guerrilla groups have been targeting all types of military vehicles with homemade bombs and small-caliber weapons. E-mails from soldiers already deployed in Iraq urged the Missouri reservists to get extra armor if possible, says one member of the 428th. The soldiers persuaded a local funeral home director who is active in community affairs to pay the $4,000 tab for 13,000 pounds of quarter-inch steel. Industrial Enterprises Inc. donated the fabricating work, also valued at about $4,000, so the steel could be fitted under vehicle floorboards and on the inside of doors. The soldiers drove off December 12 for Fort Riley, Kansas, planning to fasten the specially made steel to their vehicles when they arrived in Iraq. "We're doing what we can to protect our soldiers. That's the bottom line," says one first sergeant as news of the donated steel was being praised locally as an example of grass-roots support for the troops. "It not only boosts morale of the soldiers, but also of the soldiers' family members, who know their soldiers will be afforded some extra protection." Fort Riley spokeswoman Deb Skidmore said the reserve unit will be allowed to take the steel to Iraq, but US Central Command will decide later whether the troops will be permitted to use it. (Washington Post)
December 26: With the Bush campaign raising a record-breaking $170 million for a primary election in which he is unopposed,
2004 presidential elections
and ready to spend plenty more than that against his Democratic opponent between now and November 2004, he is being opposed by a single billionaire and a loosely affiliated group of grass-roots liberal activist organizations with more purpose than money. Naturally, the Bush campaign is crying foul. "Liberal special interests, led by billionaire currency trader George Soros, are raising millions in soft, unregulated money to defeat President Bush," cries the Bush campaign in one Internet posting. The campaign insists that Soros and anti-Bush groups plan to spend as much as a preposterous $400 million trying to defeat Bush, thus justifying the Bush primary-season goal of raising a record $170 million, largely through a network of major supporters who funnel donations to the campaign. However, campaign finance experts say there is little chance of Bush being outspent. "The Bush campaign is raising money hand-over-fist," notes Common Cause's Celia Wexler. "He has the aura of the incumbency and the power of the presidency. He's in the catbird seat." Soros has pledged $12.5 million (not $400 million) ""to ensure that the money spent on trying to re-elect President Bush doesn't overwhelm the process," as he says. Political activist group MoveOn.org has raised another $7 million in its fight to displace Bush as the president. Groups such as MoveOn are banned from coordinating activities with any party or candidate. But they have gained prominence under last year's McCain-Feingold campaign finance act which ended unregulated "soft money" donations. Democrats had relied on soft money to help offset an enormous Republican advantage in individual donations. "They [the soft money donations] have the potential to do an incredible amount of damage," said Scott Reed, a Republican consultant with close ties to the White House. He said the independent groups could run "over the top" ads attacking Bush with political impunity, and there was little financial accountability. (Presumably Reed knows this from his own party's extensive experience with "soft money" ad campaigns, including the Willie Horton smear campaign of 1988, the Whitewater smear campaign of 1992, and Bush's successful efforts to paint primary opponent John McCain as a victim of "Vietnam psychosis" in 2000.) Reed suggests that Soros is trying to help defeat Bush to promote his own business interests in France and Germany. The conservative Club for Growth, a similar group supporting the Republican Party, has already launched attack ad campaigns against Howard Dean in Iowa. (CNN)
December 26: With an eye on Howard Dean, the Bush re-election team is planning its strategy for winning the 2004 presidential elections.
GOP campaign strategies
The plan is to portray Dean as reckless, angry and pessimistic, and frame the 2004 election as a referendum on the direction of the nation more than on the president himself. Some advisors think that the campaign should begin attacking Dean now, but others are counseling patience, pointing out that the other Democratic presidential candidates are "doing a great job for us" with their own attack strategies. "Voters don't normally vote for an angry, pessimistic person to be president of the country," says senior Bush advisor Matthew Dowd, laying out the Bush campaign's key focus on Dean. "They want somebody, even if times are not great, to be forward looking and optimistic." January 20's State of the Union address is considered a kickoff speech for the Bush campaign, and will stress upbeat messages and a list of administration accomplishments. The campaign is considering using the address to propose a big new national goal that would not be partisan or ideological, and would help rally the country behind Bush's leadership, says an outside adviser to the administration. The possibilities include a major initiative for the space program or an ambitious health-care goal like increasing life expectancies. "They want to have the president talk about an important national goal that is big and a unifying theme," the adviser says. But conservatives outside of the White House are already firing on the Dean campaign. Gary Bauer, a conservative who ran for president in 2000, says: "The opponent does not have the values of the American people -- and I'm assuming Dean will be the nominee. Dean is so positioning himself as the angry left-wing candidate that if nominated he's going to take whole sections of the country and make them impossible to win for the Democratic Party." Dean's campaign dismisses the strategy and invites the Bush campaign to continue "underestimating" their candidate. (New York Times/Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

December 27: Coalition administration Paul Bremer dismisses out of hand allegations by British PM Tony Blair that secret weapons laboratories had been discovered in Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
In a Christmas message to British troops, Blair claimed there was "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories." The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed compelling evidence that showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to "conceal weapons," Blair said. However, Bremer flatly dismisses the claim as untrue, before he realizes that Blair made the remark. Bremer suggests that the claim is a "red herring," probably put about by someone opposed to military action in Iraq who wanted to undermine the coalition. "I don't know where those words come from but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said," he tells a British news program. "It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me." (Guardian)
December 27: Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich says the latest terror alerts have been called for nothing more than political gain,
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
and have done nothing besides confuse and frighten American citizens without need. Kucinich says if administration officials have information about terror threats, they should act on it, instead of advertising the threat to scare Americans. "Why didn't they just put extra security out?" he asks. "They are building up fear to become more powerful politically. ...My whole campaign is to challenge this fear, this fear about the Patriot Act, the fear about Iraq," he continues. "The fear of Iraq was not founded. They didn't attack us. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction." (San Jose Mercury News)
December 27: Two years after being detained for trying to cross into Canada with false identifications,
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
and long after the US government acknowledges that he has no connections with the 9/11 bombings or with any terrorist organizations, the government still holds Algerian Benemar Benatta without charges. Most of his time in jail was spent in solitary confinement, and he was subject to a range of physical and verbal abuse from his captors. "If they took me outside, outside my cell, sometimes they twist my hands," Benatta says. "sometimes they knock my head with the wall." Two months after the bombings, the FBI determined that Benatta had committed no crimes and had no connections with terrorists of any kind. But Benatta was never told that he had been cleared, and he remained in solitary confinement without legal representation for five more months. "No attorney that I know of knew that he existed," says Joe Mistrett, a federal public defender now representing Benatta. Eventually, Benatta was sent to a detention facility in Buffalo to face charges for possession of a fake American ID, and granted a lawyer, Mistrett. "I'm not faulting the government for taking an interest in Benemar Benatta," Mistrett says. "I just don't understand why they persisted, and the way he was held in custody." In September 2003, a federal magistrate in Buffalo concluded the government's handling of Benatta bordered on the bizarre. The judge recommended that the criminal charges against Benatta be dropped. They were, yet Benatta still remains in jail, fighting deportation to Algeria, where he fears for his life. "One thing we need to find out is, how many more Mr. Benattas are there in custody?" says Elisa Massimino of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. "How many people have, either intentionally or not, been slipped through the cracks and are being held without charge and without access to counsel?" "I tried to be understanding," Benatta said, "[but] what happened has happened already, you know? Apology or anything, it's not going to change anything." (ABC News)
December 27: An anonymous poster on the Kuro5hin message boards sums up the essential hypocrisy of the American conservative as well as anything I've read.
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
S/he characterizes it as: "the repugnant agenda of the Evangelical Christians (who see any social progress as a delay for their beloved Second Coming) to the blatant hypocrisy of attacking sexual misconduct (unless it is Newt Gingrich), degenerate gambling (unless it is Bill Bennett), government expansion and increased spending (unless it is done by G.W. Bush), drug use (unless it is done by Rush Limbaugh), the lies of the government (unless it is about a country the Republicans want to invade), treason (unless it is perpetrated by Robert Novak), and providing aid and comfort to the enemy (unless it [is] done by Geraldo Rivera on FOX News)." (Kuro5hin)
December 27 - 28: Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean charges that, from Iraq to homeland security to public health, President Bush's "reckless" habit of placing "ideology over facts" has resulted in "the most dangerous administration in my lifetime."
Iraq war and occupation
Dean also points out that, as he predicted, the capture of Saddam Hussein has made Iraq and the world no safer: "If we are safer, how come we lost 10 more troops and raised the safety alert" to the orange level, he asks. "National security and economic security are the touchstones of the election," he says in a later interview. "I think the president has been fairly reckless in just about every area I can think of." Dean accuses Bush of taking "enormous risks" by refusing to negotiate with North Korea, permitting "warlords" to control much of Afghanistan and failing to address the most serious threats to homeland security. "We've made progress" on strengthening defenses at home, he says. "The problem is, on the things that are enormously important to us we have apparently made no progress. That is the ultimate nightmare of the so-called dirty bomb or a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States." Dean receives glowing praise from Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle and the endorsement of Representative John Conyers Jr., the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus. "I am proud to state and stand with the man that's ahead of everybody else, that is raising money from the little guys to the shock of everybody who thought it should always be the big fat cats," Conyers says. (Washington Post)

Psyops campaign by MI6 to manipulate British public opinion confirmed

December 28: Britain's government has confirmed that MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service, has run an operation to gain public support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
MI6 organized and ran Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. A senior official admits that MI6 was at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Hussein's development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation. "There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons that the public needed to know," says the official. The admission follows claims by UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. Ritter describes meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material. "The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was," Ritter said last week. He says there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. "stories ran in the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programs [to produce weapons of mass destruction]," said Ritter. "They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were garbage." David Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague of Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to the media. "Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the media," according to Ritter. (London Times/Information Clearinghouse)
December 28: Coalition Provision Authority head Paul Bremer disputes Prime Minister Blair's assertions that "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" had been uncovered in Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
Bremer says, "I don't know where those words come from, but that is not what David Kay [head of the Iraq Survey Group] has said. I have read his reports, so I don't know who said that. It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me. It sounds like someone who doesn't agree with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks it down." Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, says, "It is undignified for the Prime Minister, and worrying for his nation, to go on believing in a threat which everyone else can see was a fantasy. Nor will Tony Blair ever recover his credibility until he stops insisting he is right when the public can see he was wrong." Liam Fox, co-chairman of the Conservative Party, adds: "Once again the impression has been given of a prime minister willing to say anything to save his skin and of a Labour government divided, untrustworthy and seemingly incapable of telling the truth to the British people." (Independent)
December 28: The US has abandoned a number of programs and goals previously decided upon for the Iraqis as part of its accelerated push to have an Iraqi government of some sort in place by June.
Iraq war and occupation
The plans for a constitution and the privatization of government-owned businesses have gone by the wayside and have been extensively covered, but some "lesser" ideas have not. For example, the US occupation has decided not to terminate the Hussein-era food rationing system, in which over 90% of Iraqis received monthly supplies of flour, beans, cooking oil, and other staples; the US had planned to eliminate those rations and replace them with $15/month handouts. Although the proposal has the enthusiastic support of economic conservatives in the occupation authority, concerns about the logistics have put the effort on hold. "It's a great idea that the academics thought up, but it wasn't in tune with the political realities," says a US official familiar with discussions of the issue. "We have to look at what we gain versus what we risk." Also tabled is the idea of disarming various local and tribal militias, particularly the Kurdish pesh mergas. Instead of being integrated into the new army and police forces, the militias will be allowed to remain independent. The occupation authority has also substantially decreased the number of new recruits it intends to put through a three-month boot camp designed to build an improved, professionally trained army. Instead, the occupation authority is increasing the ranks of police officers and civil defense troops, who can be deployed faster but receive far less training and screening than the soldiers. "The Americans promised to limit our security forces to a professional army and a professional police," says Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni member of Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council. "They should not tolerate these militias. They should be dissolving them." (Washington Post)
December 28: Libya's feared nuclear weapons program was nowhere near the levels that Bush administration officials have indicated,
Global nuclear proliferation
according to International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed El Baradei; he says it appears that Libya was not even close to making a nuclear weapon. Libya's decision earlier this month to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programme and allow in international observers was seen as a major coup for the UK and US, who had been putting pressure on Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The British government said at the time that Libya had not "acquired a nuclear weapons capability, though it was close to developing one." However, El Baradei's comments appeared to suggest the extent of Libya's WMD may have been exaggerated, possibly by the Libyans themselves. The weapons inspector says, "From the look of it, they were not close to a weapon, but we need to go and see it and discuss the details with them. We need to understand a lot of what was going on. We expect they will show us everything relevant to the [nuclear] program. Whether they succeeded to a weapons program, we will have to see, but as far as I was told they have only a rudimentary program." (Scotsman)
December 28: Former international development secretary Clare Short calls on Tony Blair to resign as prime minister.
Iraq war and occupation
Short accuses Blair of deceiving the British people over the Iraq war, and says that Blair has risked his own legacy because of an obsession with "his place in history." Labour MP Diane Abbott says that Blair has risked backbench rebellions by making loyal MPs feel like "pillocks" over the Iraq war, and adds, "I never believed this thing about missiles being ready for fire in 45 minutes but sadly some of my colleagues did and they are the ones that are most bitter and disgruntled." Short suggests that Mr Blair had behaved worse than John Profumo, a cabinet minister who resigned in 1963 over his affair with Christine Keeler. "Profumo lied about having an affair with a prostitute and had to resign," she says. "If you are going to start getting into deceit when you are going to war and risking human life it has gone too far." She says both British and US intelligence agencies knew Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, the premise for the war. Further, going to war without the second UN resolution had been a disaster. She says she had not ruled out the use of force but it had to have UN backing, and adds that there were other ways to get rid of Hussein. "We could have done it right but I think what Tony did was promise Bush he would be with him come what may, promise us a second resolution." She says what followed was "deceit and all the disgruntlement in the UK and the failure to prepare for afterwards which is a complete disaster for the Middle East, for Iraq, for the world. ...No one thought there was some imminent danger. That was all talked up and talked up to a point of deceit. I think he thought it was an honorable thing to do and he thought it was important to stick with the US and not let them be alone. If he had to tell a few lies on the way it was for a good cause. I think he thought it was honorable." A Blair spokesperson says that regardless of claims about WMDs, the war was justified because of Hussein's cruel and inhuman treatment of his people. (BBC)
December 28: While the Bush re-election campaign denies it is heavily involved in activities yet,
GOP campaign strategies
and while few, if any, Bush election officials are seen as yet on mainstream television news shows, the campaign is working night and day to push its themes on right-wing talk radio. Not only the national talk shows hosted by the Limbaughs and the Hannitys are being focused upon, but the local right-wing radio shows are receiving daily bulletins from Bush's election campaign, which in many cases are going out on the air almost verbatim. The New York Times reports that "strategists and radio experts say the Bush campaign has taken [the practice of using radio to promote political campaigns] to a new level of sophistication, using it far earlier in the campaign cycle and appearing regularly on shows with even the tiniest of audiences." Campaign officials like Terry Holt, a regular on local radio, say they like the smaller talk shows because they are given kid-gloves treatment, and they can have their say without having to defend their talking points from Democratic criticisms. (New York Times/Free Republic)

December 29: Libya's pledge to dismantle its program to develop weapons of mass destruction
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
could pave the way for the return of US oil companies that left the North African country in 1986 when then-President Ronald Reagan imposed sanctions on the country. The US is expected to lift the Libyan portion of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act next year. However, this may not occur until after the presidential elections in November. The United Nations lifted sanctions against Libya in September. JJ Traynor, an oil analyst at Deutsche Bank, says talks between Libya and US oil companies could start early in the new year. Traynor says the companies most likely to seek a return to Libya are ConocoPhilips, Marathon Oil and Amerada Hess, partners in the Oasis group in Libya. Occidental Petroleum is also interested in returning to Libya. Libya's nuclear program was at a very early stage, Mohammmed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said after touring four atomic sites. "We haven't seen any enriched uranium," he added, referring to the essential material for a nuclear bomb. (Financial Times)
December 29: The FBI urges US citizens to be on the lookout for people carrying almanacs as potential terrorists (see above related item).
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
The FBI, in a bulletin sent on Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, cautions that the reference books could be used for terrorist planning. Terrorists, the FBI asserts, may use almanacs "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning." The bulletin urges officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways. "The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning," the FBI notes. "For local law enforcement, it's just to help give them one more piece of information to raise their suspicions," says David Heyman, a terrorism expert for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It helps make sure one more bad guy doesn't get away from a traffic stop, maybe gives police a little bit more reason to follow up on this." The FBI notes that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, "the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities." But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior -- such as apparent surveillance -- a person with an almanac "may point to possible terrorist planning." The FBI says that information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps. The FBI urges police to report such discoveries to the local US Joint Terrorism Task Force. (AP/CNN)
December 29: The US Army has discharged three soldiers for abusing prisoners at a detention center in Iraq.
US torture allegations
The unit commander found the three soldiers, all members of the 143rd Transportation Command, had mistreated and abused prisoners at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq on May 12. Two soldiers were demoted and all three forfeited their salaries for two months. One of the three, a master sergeant, was found to have slammed a prisoner to the ground and kicked and stomped him in the groin, abdomen, and head, and encouraged her subordinates to follow suit. She received an "other-than-honorable conditions" discharge from her immediate commander. The second soldier, a staff sergeant, was found to have dragged a prisoner by his shoulders and then to have held his legs apart "and encouraging others to kick him in the groin while other U.S. soldiers kicked him in the abdomen and head," says the commander. He was also found to have thrown the detainee face-down to the ground and have stomped his arm, which had already been injured. The staff sergeant has also been found to have made "a false sworn statement to a special agent of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division." He was demoted to sergeant and later received a "general, under honorable conditions" discharge. The third, a specialist, was found guilty of similar charges, including making a false statement to the army's criminal investigators and holding a detainee's legs apart "while others kicked him in the groin," in addition to "violently twisting his previously injured arm and causing him to scream in pain." He was demoted to private, two grades lower than specialist, and received a "general, under honorable conditions" discharge from his commander. All three soldiers have returned to the US. A fourth soldier was charged in the same case, but that soldier, a sergeant, requested and received an "other-than-honorable" discharge from the military last year rather than face a court-martial. (AP/Miami Herald)
December 29: The US is having tremendous problems marketing itself overseas.
Bush's foreign policies
The government's public-relations drive to build a favorable impression abroad, particularly among Muslim nations, is a shambles, according to Republican and Democratic lawmakers, State Department officials and independent experts. They say the effort, known as public diplomacy, lacks direction and is starved of cash and personnel. "I was really shocked by the level of animosity over our policies toward Israel and the Palestinians, even in places like Turkey," says conservative journalist and American Enterprise Institute fellow James Glassman. Critics say that the Bush administration has failed to capitalize on the ouster of Saddam Hussein, and did not maintain the sympathy generated by the 9/11 attacks. In Iraq, occupation officials routinely place blame for their miscalculations on pessimistic American news media, a reflex that even some hawks denounce as deceptive. Public diplomacy is "a complete and utter disaster in Iraq," said Mark Helmke, a senior staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who holds that the occupation authority has done little to counter criticism that it is an imperial, occupying force. "We have four different agencies running media operations there. There's no coordination, no strategy." A senior State Department official wonders, "Why, in Jordan, do people think Osama bin Laden is a better leader than George Bush? It's not just Arabs who are angry with the United States. It's worldwide." Two years ago, the Bush administration, hoping to tap the expertise of the private sector, hired Charlotte Beers, a Madison Avenue advertising whiz, as officials built their case for war with Iraq. After producing a feel-good video about Muslims in the United States, which was rejected by some Arab nations and even scoffed at by some State Department colleagues, Beers retired in March, citing health reasons. Now, the administration has retained an old government hand, Margaret Tutwiler. Tutwiler is a former State Department spokeswoman and former ambassador to Morocco. She will attempt to convey the administration's intentions in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to counter the virulent anti-Americanism that fosters terrorism. Most administration officials feel that Tutwiler will do a good job of countering the spread of anti-American sentiment spreading throughout the globe. (New York Times/CommonDreams)
December 29: Iraq's interim trade ministry is investigating alleged corruption of up to $40 million by members of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and senior ministry officials.
Iraq war and occupation
Trade minister Ali Allawi says he discovered a month ago that a contract for wooden doors worth about $80 million had been manipulated. "I think a third of it was stolen," he says, specifically estimating that "probably around 30, 40 million" disappeared. Allawi says the allegations mainly involve "contract manipulation and...contract prioritization" which he has asked a prosecutor to investigate. "There is strong evidence...of the implication of certain individuals, senior management who have since been asked to leave, together with, unfortunately, figures in the CPA," says Allawi; "If the evidence is confirmed then obviously I'll bring charges." It is not the first time post-war contracts in Iraq have come under scrutiny. The Middle East Economic Survey predicted earlier that it was increasingly unlikely Iraq's new mobile telephone service would be in place by year's end because of a Pentagon investigation into allegations of corruption in the awarding of the three licences. In October, the British charity Christian Aid alleged $4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the country's reconstruction had disappeared into "opaque" bank accounts administered by the CPA. Allawi said the latest allegations ran counter to the mentality he was trying to instill within his department. "We are trying as much as possible to instill a culture of resisting corruption," he says. The ministry is organizing a public forum to create a non-governmental organisation that would combat the problem. (Agence France-Presse/ABC News)
December 29: The Right Reverend Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham,
Antiwar protests
accuses the religious conservatives who back President Bush of espousing "a very strange distortion of Christianity," and calls for the creation of a UN army to settle international disputes. Wright says: "For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug dealing. This is not to deny that there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to do it." Wright's criticisms come on the heels of a major political embarassment for Prime Minister Blair, when CPA head Paul Bremer dismissed as a "red herring" Blair's claims that "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" had already been uncovered in Iraq. (Independent)

Ashcroft recuses himself from Plame investigation; Fitzgerald named special prosecutor

December 30: Attorney General John Ashcroft officially recuses himself from the Valerie Plame Wilson/CIA leak probe, and names US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as the case's special prosecutor.
Plame outing
Fitzgerald will report to Ashcroft's deputy, James Comey. Comey says of Ashcroft's decision, "The attorney general, in an abundance of caution, believed that his recusal was appropriate based on the totality of the circumstances and the facts and evidence developed at this stage of the investigation. I agree with that judgment. And I also agree that he made it at the appropriate time, the appropriate point in this investigation." Many observers have called for Ashcroft to recuse himself for months, and believe that his involvement up to now may have irreversibly tainted the investigation. Fitgerald, the newly named head of the probe into the leak, is called "fiercely independent, relentless, tireless, fearless" by those who have worked with him. A Chicago-based US attorney, Fitzgerald has sent al-Qaeda terrorists, mob hit men and drug dealers to jail; last month he indicted the former governor of Illinois. American Lawyer magazine has written of his "almost frightening brilliance." Author Daniel Benjamin, having studied Fitzgerald's work in prosecuting terrorists in New York, calls him "an awesome public servant." On the other hand, Fitzgerald is a close friend of Department of Justice official James Comey, the second highest official in the department behind John Ashcroft, leaves some critics wondering if Fitzgerald can be objective and aggressive in his investigation. Presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman says Fitzgerald's appointment means "there is still no real independence and autonomy." Fitzgerald's assignment is to find out who told columnist Robert Novak last summer that the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. Wilson was in the news because he had disproved President Bush's assertion, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger.
Fitzgerald begins by taking a crash briefing on the case from FBI investigator Jack Eckenrode. Fitzgerald plows through the raw data -- the 302 files -- in record time, prompting Eckenrode to reflect that Fitzgerald is "one serious prosecutor."
Fitzgerald already has a strong distaste for government and media interference in his cases. One terrorism case, against two large Chicago-area Islamic charities, was compromised by New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who leaked sensitive law enforcement information to the charities, enabling them to dodge convictions. Fitzgerald could never find out who leaked the information to Miller. Now, still trying to find that answer, Fitzgerald finds himself involved in another case involving government leakers -- and Miller.
Though Ashcroft says publicly that he recused himself from the Plame investigation as soon as he realized he might have a conflict of interest, Ashcroft is lying. In reality, he continued to oversee the probe for over two months in late 2003 after learning that FBI agents suspected White House officials Lewis Libby and Karl Rove of trying to mislead the FBI to conceal their roles in the leak. National Journal reporter Murray Waas writes, "Despite these briefings, which took place between October and December 2003, and despite the fact that senior White House aides might become central to the leak case, Ashcroft did not recuse himself from the matter until December 30, when he allowed the appointment of a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to take over the investigation." Long before he recused himself, Ashcfoft had known that the FBI had uncovered evidence that Libby, chief of staff to Dick Cheney, had misled the bureau about his role in the leaking of Plame's identity to the press. By November, investigators had obtained personal notes of Libby's that indicated he had first learned from Cheney that Plame was a CIA officer. But Libby was insisting in FBI interviews that he had learned Plame's name and identity from journalists. Libby was also telling investigators that when he told reporters that Plame worked for the CIA, he was only passing along an unsubstantiated rumor. Libby, of course, lied to the FBI, and officials told Ashcroft that the FBI investigators knew they were being lied to. They also reported that Libby may have lied to the FBI to defend other, more senior administration officials. By November 2003, Ashcroft also learned that the FBI didn't believe Rove's accounts of how he came to learn about Plame's identity and how he leaked that information to columnist Robert Novak, who outed Plame in a July 14, 2003 syndicated column. In a briefing devoted specifically to Rove and Novak, officials told Ashcroft that investigators believed it was possible that the presidential aide and the columnist had devised a cover story to present to the FBI to make it appear that Rove had not been a source for Novak's column.
Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft continued to oversee the Valerie Plame-CIA leak probe for more than two months in late 2003 after he learned in extensive briefings that FBI agents suspected White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of trying to mislead the FBI to conceal their roles in the leak, according to government records and interviews. Despite these briefings, which took place between October and December 2003, and despite the fact that senior White House aides might become central to the leak case, Ashcroft did not recuse himself from the matter until December 30, when he allowed the appointment of a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to take over the investigation.
Many federal investigators found it wrong of Ashcroft to continue overseeing the investigation, since Rove and Libby are top aides to Bush and Cheney, respectively, and Rove had been a political consultant to Ashcroft in his senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns. Since the Watergate era, attorneys general have traditionally disqualified themselves from politically sensitive investigations that involve their friends and political associates, or those of the presidents they serve. Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, says that Ashcroft should have recused himself from the Plame probe "once he learned that the people professionally trained to draw these inferences," meaning the FBI investigators, "believed there was substantial reason that Rove and Libby were involved in the leak. ...There is always going to be an interim period during which you decide you will recuse or not recuse. But [Ashcroft] should have had an 'aha!' moment when he learned that someone, figuratively, or in this case literally, next door to the president of the United States -- who was Ashcroft's boss -- was under suspicion."
In October 2003, then-Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo told Waas that Ashcroft maintained an intense interest in the probe because he considered it imperative to determine who leaked Plame's identity. "The attorney general wants this to be investigated thoroughly and promptly, and to that end, he wants to be informed of the progress of the investigators," Corallo said. (This is hard to swallow because of Ashcroft's systematic efforts to delay and block the investigation.) Corallo now serves as a spokesman for Rove on the CIA leak case.
Current and former Justice officials not directly involved in the case say, almost without exception, that once senior aides to both Bush and Cheney came under suspicion, Ashcroft should have recused himself entirely from the case.
On September 30, 2003, the day Bush announced the Justice Department probe, Ashcroft told reporters that, while he would retain oversight of the case, prosecutors and FBI agents "who are and will be handling the investigation are career professionals with extensive experience in handling matters involving sensitive national security information." According to the less-than-believable Corallo, Ashcroft was deeply interested in the investigation from its inception, and demanded regular briefings on its progress, on the congressional testimony of senior Justice officials who briefed the attorney general on the matter, and to interviews with current and former federal law enforcement officials. The briefings for Ashcroft were conducted by Christopher Wray, then the assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division, and John Dion, a 30-year career prosecutor who was the day-to-day supervisor of the investigation.
On October 16, Ashcroft told reporters, "I believe that we have been making progress that's valuable in this matter." Asked about the possible appointment of a special prosecutor, he said, "I have not foreclosed any options in this matter." What he didn't reveal was the October 14 interview of Libby by the FBI, where Libby insisted that his revelation of Plame's identity to reporters was merely what he called unsubstantiated gossip that he had heard from other journalists, a claim that would be proven a lie. Libby also told the FBI that a day or two before he spoke to reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller, he was told about Plame by NBC's Tim Russert. But Ashcroft knew about Libby's testimony. He was also briefed almost immediately after Libby's November 2003 testimony. The FBI had already obtained Libby's own notes stating that Cheney, not Russert, was the person who told Libby about Plame's CIA connection. Also by then, investigators had obtained other government records and the accounts of other witnesses indicating that Wilson's Niger mission and Plame's possible role in sending her husband to Africa were major preoccupations for Cheney. Libby refused to confirm that he had learned of Plame's identity from Cheney until confronted with his own notes -- and he then asserts that he had promptly forgotten about it until he "relearned" it from Russert, and he forgot he had known about Plame beforehand. Naturally, FBI investigators were skeptical, and Ashcroft was quickly briefed on the FBI's questions about Libby's veracity. And the FBI was already theorizing that Libby was lying in order to protect Cheney.
Charles Wolfram, professor emeritus of legal ethics at Cornell Law School, says the "most distressing" ethical aspect of the case was that Ashcroft continued overseeing the Plame probe even after Cheney's name arose. "This should have been a matter of common sense," he says. Ashcroft "should have left it to career prosecutors whether or not to go after politically sensitive targets. You can't have Ashcroft investigate the people who appointed him or of his own political party."
Around the same date that Libby was interviewed, the FBI also questioned Rove for the first time. During that interview, and later in his initial appearance before the grand jury, Rove did not disclose that he had spoken about Plame to Cooper. Ashcroft wasn't briefed about the omission because at that time investigators apparently didn't know that Rove and Cooper had talked on July 9, 2003, just before Novak's column appeared. Rove's failure in the early stages of the CIA leak probe to provide information on his conversation with Cooper about Plame is one of the reasons Rove is still under investigation by Fitzgerald. Although FBI investigators did not know of the Rove-Cooper phone call, they were skeptical about Rove's account of his July conversation with Novak. Both Rove and Novak have since confirmed that Rove was one of "two senior administration officials" cited as sources in Novak's column. (The other Novak source was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, but at this point neither Waas nor anyone else in the media is sure of this fact. See other items throughout this site.) Ashcroft was advised during the fall 2003 briefings that investigators had strong doubts about Novak's and Rove's accounts of their July 9 conversation. The investigators were skeptical that Novak would have relied merely on an offhand comment from Rove as the basis for writing his column about Plame. Rove then told investigators that he couldn't remember who had originally told him about Plame, though he thought he heard it from a journalist -- a story strikingly similar to that of Libby, and equally false. Corallo, showing an equal propensity for untruth as he used at the DOJ, says of his employer, "Karl Rove has never urged anyone directly or indirectly to withhold information from the special counsel or testify falsely."
As the leak probe progressed through the fall of 2003, Rove's past work as a political advisor to Ashcroft in three of his political campaigns was not the only concern for career Justice Department officials. Also not lost to some career prosecutors was the fact that a number of Ashcroft's top aides at Justice had come from the Republican National Committee. During the initial stages of the Plame investigation, the RNC was at the forefront of the Bush administration's effort to stymie demands for the appointment of a special prosecutor and to continue the campaign to discredit Wilson. To some career investigators, the RNC appeared to be acting as a proxy for the White House in attempting to thwart the naming of a special prosecutor.
The connections between the RNC, Ashcroft, and the White House are myriad. David Israelite, who was a deputy chief of staff to Ashcroft, had been the RNC's political director. Barbara Comstock, who was Ashcroft's director of public affairs, had been in charge of the RNC's opposition research department. Corallo, who succeeded Comstock at Justice under Ashcroft, had also worked for the RNC. Currently, Comstock is serving as a spokeswoman for Libby and his legal team as he prepares for trial early next year.
Ashcroft's refusal to recuse himself caused tremendous ethical and procedural headaches for senior DOJ officials. Wray, head of the Criminal Division, was supervising the investigation. Ordinarily, if he had sought Ashcroft's recusal, ultimate authority over the investigation would have fallen to the deputy attorney general. But that position was then vacant. On October 3, President Bush had nominated James Comey, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, to be deputy attorney general. The leak probe was just getting under way, and Comey was awaiting Senate confirmation. Meanwhile, the acting deputy attorney general was Robert McCallum, a Yale classmate of Bush's and a lifelong friend of the president and first lady Laura Bush. Bush and McCallum were inducted together into the secret Skull and Bones Society at Yale. Had Ashcroft recused himself, it is almost certain that McCallum would have had to recuse himself as well. That would put Wray in the position of demanding that his two superiors recuse themselves, and placing himself in charge of the investigation with no one to oversee him. "He was really in a difficult position," says a former Justice Department official. "If Wray had walked into the AG's office and asked that Ashcroft recuse, Wray would have in effect been making himself the de facto attorney general" in the matter. "But Ashcroft should have known on his own what to do. He didn't need to be asked. He didn't need to be pushed. He should have just done it."
Comey was confirmed on December 9, 2003, and shortly thereafter began began privately arguing that Ashcroft should step aside and name a special prosecutor. When Comey announced Ashcroft's recusal and the naming of Fitzgerald as special prosecutor on December 30, he was most circumspect in the wording, giving Ashcroft far more credit than was due for making the decision using "an abundance of caution." When Comey was later asked what might have caused the Fitzgerald appointment, he replied, "If you were to speculate in print or in the media about particular people, I think that would be unfair to them." But, almost as an afterthought, he added, "We don't want people that we might be interested in to know we're interested in them." (Washington Post, Washington Post, National Journal, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
December 30: Columnist Jimmy Breslin says of the US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, and the US government's attempt to keep its citizens ignorant of the cost of war:
Iraq war and occupation
"The complaint about the military holding back pictures is one part of the attempt to make you as unaware as possible that soldiers are dying in Iraq. They have this Bremer who stands in his jacket, shirt and tie and talks about the new Iraqi government that we have set up. He doesn't seem to know about death. He doesn't know that every time we try to put our democracy into one of these totalitarian countries, the scum comes to the top. They have been living elsewhere and rush back to lick American boots and get positions in the great new government. The government folds and the imams take over. And the dead are brought back here almost furtively. There are no ceremonies or pictures of caskets at Dover, Del., air base, where the dead are brought. 'You don't want to upset the families,' George Bush said. That the people might be slightly disturbed already by the death doesn't seem to register. The wounded are flown into Washington at night. There are 5,000 of them and for a long time you never heard of soldiers who have no arms and legs. Then the singer Cher went into Walter Reed Hospital and came out and gave a report that was so compelling she should walk away with a Pulitzer Prize. Finally, a couple of television stations and a newspaper here and there began to cover these things. There are miles to go." (Newsday)

December 31: The US set a new record in 2003 by importing 63% of its oil from foreign sources, the largest percentage of imported oil ever.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
Oil analysts say that number is likely to increase in 2004. In 1991, the US imported only 28% of its oil. Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat, says, "If we don't take measures to stem our reliance on foreign oil, we're going to pay an awful price down the road." George Beranek, oil analyst with the Petroleum Finance Company, says that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is not a viable near-term solution to this dependence. "ANWR is going nowhere anyway," Beranek said, referring to the Senate quagmire on allowing drilling in ANWR. "Even if it were opened for drilling tomorrow, it wouldn't be producing oil for five years." Saudi Arabia is the biggest provider of the US's imported oil, with Mexico, Canada, and Venezuela coming in next. (Reuters)
December 31: The Bush administration is considering delaying $4 billion in Iraqi reconstruction contracts.
Iraq war and occupation
The decision, which is all but certain to be implemented, comes without an explanation from the administration. The set-aside contracts will not be provided to countries like France, Germany, and Russia, which are all prohibited by the administration from doing business in Iraq. (CNN)
December 31: Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has recently taken over the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson,
Plame outing
has a large amount of material to work with already, including over 30 interviews with senior Bush administration officials, as well as notes of White House meetings, calendars, phone records and datebooks that officials have said provided telling clues about who within the administration may have had access to Ms. Plame's identity. Fitzgerald, is armed with a full range of prosecutorial powers, including the authority to convene a grand jury to obtain sworn testimony from officials suspected of having knowledge of the matter. (New York Times/Spy News)
December 31: Criticism from Democratic presidential candidates is flying in the wake of the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson,
Plame outing
focusing on the fact that the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is a political appointee, and that Attorney General John Ashcroft's deputy, James Comey, will supervise Fitzgerald's investigation. "The public will not likely trust the results of an investigation headed by a political appointee, especially when the special counsel is constrained by Department of Justice regulations that severely curtail the prosecutor's autonomy," says Senator Joseph Lieberman. "Whether it is a special counsel or the Justice Department inspector general, the American people deserve a person whose honesty, objectivity and fairness are guaranteed to investigate this serious matter," said former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Senator John Edwards did not criticize the appointment, but said Ashcroft's decision "comes far too late. President Bush knows how to get what he wants inside his White House, yet for months, his administration has somehow failed to find the person responsible for this dangerous and destructive leak." Senator John Kerry called Fitzgerald's appointment "a half measure and nowhere good enough to restore public confidence in this tarnished agency." He says Comey and Fitzgerald "are both Bush political appointees and carry the same baggage as John Ashcroft." (Fox News)
December 31: The New York Times' William Safire, a popular conservative columnist,
Conservative media slant
flatly predicts another "major terror attack" on an American target just before the 2004 presidential elections. Safire, Richard Nixon's former speechwriter and political aide, and a consummate Washington insider, neither explains nor elaborates on his prediction, and gives no sources, but his status as a major Washington player makes it clear that Safire is echoing a train of thought and discussion commonly heard in the corridors of power. WSWS asks, "Given the record of lies, conspiracies and provocations of the Bush administration, and Safire's well-known connections to the centers of power in Washington and the White House, several obvious questions arise from the New Year's eve column: (1) Who are the sources and what is the information on which Safire bases his prediction of a major pre-election terror attack, and, (2) Is the perpetration, or at least allowance, of such an attack being discussed within government, intelligence or military circles as a serious option for keeping Bush in power in 2004, regardless the sentiment of the electorate?" (World Socialist Web Site)

By year's end, the cliche has taken hold that the CPA and the Coalition military is in a "race against time" in Iraq,
Iraq war and occupation
recalls former Wasit governor Mark Etherington. He writes, "I had always thought this evidence of a lack of substantive thought, because the object of the race -- indeed its very purpose -- was so rarely articulated. If we were racing against anyone, it was Moqtada al-Sadr and insurgents for the support of ordinary Iraqis. To pursue the metaphor further, we were neither in condition for the race nor properly equipped for it; and we did not always have a full view of our competitors or their preparations." (Mark Etherington)
From the period of April through December 2003, the Baghdad morgue had received 2,846 violent deaths of Iraqi civilians.
Iraq war and occupation
Subtracting the usual amount of violent deaths occuring in Baghdad before the war, the rate of death by violence has more than doubled. Gunshot wounds, once accounting for 10% of violent deaths, now cause 60%. Some Iraqis were killed by US troops, but the majority of deaths are Iraqis killing Iraqis. The root cause seems to be the lawlessness and anarchy that have reigned throughout the city since the invasion. (Peter Singer)

Back to December 2003

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

December 2004, Week Four

Page Two

Massive and systematic profiteering and incompetence throughout corporate rebuilding project in Iraq

Psyops campaign by MI6 to manipulate British public opinion confirmed

Ashcroft recuses himself from Plame investigation; Fitzgerald named special prosecutor

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