The revenge of the CIA

[maddezmom]

~snip~
At the State Department and at the CIA, they're finally starting to swing some punches his way," said the former adviser. "When it comes to Chalabi, they've been saying for years 'not to be trusted'."

On the BBC's The World Tonight on Friday, Christopher Dickie, a journalist who has known Mr Chalabi for 20 years, said: "I interviewed Ahmed about some of the controversy surrounding him. I said: 'Look, a lot of people in the CIA and the State Department say you would do anything to drag the USA into a war with Saddam Hussein'. He looked me in the eye and he said: 'Yes. Absolutely.' "

Only a year ago, after the apparently triumphant race of US troops to Baghdad, Mr Rumsfeld was the superstar of the Bush administration, voted by People magazine as one of the "sexiest men alive". Mr Wolfowitz was acknowledged as its pre-eminent intellect.

Not any more. The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that the Pentagon was not even consulted by the top US civilian in Iraq, Mr Bremer, before last week's raid on the home of its former protege, although a meeting was held involving both State Department officials and the National Security Council.

~snip~
more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/23/wirq223.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/05/23/ixnewstop.html
many interesting tidbits in this...

[Brett Stanton]

1. What a clusterfuck

the Pentagon was not even consulted by the top US civilian in Iraq, Mr Bremer, before last week's raid on the home of its former protege

What the hell is going on over there?

[LittleApple81]

2. Your guess as good as anybody else's. n/t

[maddezmom]

4. Office of Special Plans.....created by Cheney and Wolfie po'd the CIA

A sense of schadenfreude is palpable. In 2002, CIA officials were humiliated by the creation, in the heart of the Department of Defence, of a rival centre of intelligence-gathering, the so-called Office of Special Plans.

Created by Paul Wolfowitz, with the blessing of the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, the OSP soon rivalled the CIA as Mr Bush's main source of information concerning Iraq's possible weapons of mass destruction. Its very existence was intended as a damning indictment of CIA intelligence-gathering techniques.

"Cheney and Wolfowitz thought the CIA far too conservative," said a Pentagon adviser.

"It was seen as too cautious." An internal Pentagon memorandum of the time even suggested that intelligence efforts to date had "downplayed or sought to disprove" a possible link between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

[pacifictiger]

8. some have been hinting that STATE dept

was behind the raid. Payback time for these many months of being sidelined by the defense dept.

[Tellurian]

10. I'm beginning to feel like a parent away on vacation calling home and

finding out the kids are wrecking the house.

[Sentath]

23. I'm still at that point in the call where

you can hear odd noises in the background, and you know that your credit card shouldn't have been declined, but you haven't quite figured out whats going on entirely...

{rlg}

Disclaimer: I'm not a parent, but I am older than my single sibling by 11 years.

[Eloriel]

17. Bremer doesn't have control over the troops, does he?

How did we get both U.S. and Iraqis conducting the raid?

I thought Rumsfeld was lying yesterday morning (or whenever it was) when he said he knew nothing about it. Apparently not???

[Alerter_]

20. US government has started to isolate Bush and the Neo-Cons

Basically, Bush and the Neo-Cons are not working for America's interests, and the rest of the government is starting to act accordingly. I guess?!

[crossroads]

43. Karma is a perfect justice system!

I pray they will get as they gave, and tenfold!!!
:shrug:

[exploited]

25. Why consult with the Pentagon?

The Pentagon staff can't even protect their own building from an "aircraft" despite an hours worth of warning.

[pretzel4gore]

30. remember the airliner hit the reinforced section...

the pentagon was undergoing fixing/strengthening and apparently the crash site was the part which best withstood the disaster....
one of the peculiarities of 911 that just aches for some explanation- whoever did it '911' wanted fewest casualties within reason (i recall guliani saying there were 10thousand people trapped in each tower...so 20thousand dead w/out including people on the planes!)

[nolabels]

35. I had kind of the same take on the WTC

I was kind of shame to think that way, but you can bet money some on Wall Street think the same way. You did notice what part of New York they crashed into, also, I am sure.

We poor people never called for class warfare, but just look how some are want to prepare to fight such things.

I still remember the story my father told about he and his brothers waking up in the morning,looking for toys on Christmas day, during the depression. They finding none, rounded ups some cockroaches and hitched them up with string after they found some little thrown away match boxes. Made their own toys and had some fun little chariot races with them.

The poor suffer the most durring economic downturns, but taking down the haughty beligerance by elitest is of consequnce that also gets put in the equation.

http://www.awitness.org/journal/great_depression.html
The Great Depression.
George Bush vs Einstein on economic policy

According to the mathematician, Albert Einstein, the policies of George Bush are likely to result in another Great Depression. To quote a recurring quip, 'I know George Bush, and let me tell you, George Bush is no Albert Einstein.'

During a recent press conference, a reporter asked Ari Fleischer if the President believed that ‘deficits did not matter', given the huge size of the tax cuts pushed through in this administration. The press Secretary replied that the President believed that his tax cut proposal was the best way to ‘create jobs'. At the present time the Republican Administration is pushing these tax cuts as an ‘economic stimulus package' as well as a measure to ‘create jobs'. Here we have an old policy being dressed up in new propaganda. The policy has not changed but the sales pitch certainly has.

(snip)
Essentially what happened in the 1920's was that there was an oversupply of goods. It was not that the surplus products of industrialized society were not wanted, but rather that those whose needs were not satiated could not afford more, whereas the wealthy were satiated by spending only a small portion of their income. A 1932 article in Current History articulates the problems of this maldistribution of wealth ... One obvious solution to the problem of the vast majority of the population not having enough money to satisfy all their needs was to let those who wanted goods buy products on credit. The concept of buying now and paying later caught on quickly. By the end of the 1920's 60% of cars and 80% of radios were bought on installment credit. Between 1925 and 1929 the total amount of outstanding installment credit more than doubled from $1.38 billion to around $3 billion. Installment credit allowed one to "telescope the future into the present", as the President's Committee on Social Trends noted. This strategy created artificial demand for products which people could not ordinarily afford. It put off the day of reckoning, but it made the downfall worse when it came.

Mass speculation went on throughout the late 1920's. In 1929 alone, a record volume of 1,124,800,410 shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange. From early 1928 to September 1929 the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from 191 to 381. This sort of profit was irresistible to investors. Company earnings became of little interest; as long as stock prices continued to rise huge profits could be made.
(snip)

[keithyboy]

37. What is going on in the US is a better question.

There is little we can do about what is going on in Iraq, but a lot we can do here at home like getting information out to people we know and getting more people to vote against Bush.

[Just Me]

3. Yup. Hey,...he was a neocon's best friend *LOL*!!! n/t

[gp]

5. A video link to BBC Hardtalk interview with *PoS* Chalabi

its from a couple of weeks ago

Where chalabi literally says "They (referring to David Kay and United States in general) were so dumb as to believe in our con game"...

its about 7:30 min into the interview


RealVideo
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/04/hardtalk/chalabi08apr.ram

related article here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/3612111.stm

[Nevernose]

12. That quote is taken out of context

I listened to the whole response, and he was projecting as to what he thought David Kay's thoughts must be. He also clearly says "He (David Kay) is saying that, not I. I say that we provided inteliigence in good faith."

I still think he's a lying piece of shit, but it's not fair to take the quote out of context.

[0007]

14. Thanks for the video of Chalabi

I must say that was one of the best interviews I've seen in a long time.

Wish our American ladies could interview like that Brit.

[gp]

6. LOL

"Elsewhere, to King Abdullah of Jordan, Mr Bush remarked: "You can piss on Chalabi."

[Gman]

7. Failure

"According to one retired general: "We've gone from 'failure is not an option' to failure, of some kind, being the only option."

[PurityOfEssence]

26. Failure is not an option; it's standard equipment on a Neo-convertible

We are just the stupidest cornfed hayseeds to ever walk into town in a plaid suit. The very idea of announcing our blockheaded need to beat the tar out of this country will just make our failure more complete.

[nightperson]

9. Here's

a similar article to show Republicans.

[maddezmom]

11. yes, the article points out it's also top military turning on bushco*

Instead, the New York Post editorial inadvertently pointed out one, but by no means all, of the major sources for Hersh's information. The editorial alleged that Hersh had received much of his material from the CIA.

Based on the material Hersh quoted, his legendary intelligence community contacts were probably sources for some of his information. However, Hersh has also enjoyed close personal relations with many now high-ranking officers in the United States Army, going all the way back to his prize-winning coverage and scoops in Vietnam more than 30 years ago.

Indeed, intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations. These sources also said that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses.

~snip~

But what enrages many serving senior Army generals and U.S. top-level intelligence community professionals is that the "few" in this case were not primarily the serving soldiers who were actually encouraged to carry out the abuses and even then take photos of the victims, but that they were encouraged to do so, with the Army's well-established safeguards against such abuses deliberately removed by high-level Pentagon civilian officials.

[DEMVET-USMC]

18. Civilian prison official for Abu Ghraib appointed by John Ashcroft

The New York Times: May 21, 2004: page A 10 by Fox Butterfield and Eric Lichtblau "SCREENING OF PRISON OFFICIALS IS FAULTED BY LAWMAKERS": On into the article it is noted that : Lane McCotter was dispatched by Mr. Ashcroft to head a team of Americans to reopen Iraq`s prisons. Lane McCotter was forced to resign as Director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 due to cruelty resulting in death. He then created his own PRIVATE PRISON COMPANY one of who`s jails was strongly criticized in a justice Dept. report just a month before the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT sent him to Iraq. Keep in mind Ashcroft is head of the justice department. It seems Mr. Ashcroft does not event pay any any heed to his own Department`s judgement. This is powerful stuff. If it were not for one scandal after another coming to the fore it would surely be getting some significant attention. It seems Mr. Goodie two shoes Ashcroft`s Christian beliefs do not stand in his way of appointing a documented prisoner abuser to head up prison affairs in Iraq. Please some help from you more savvy web users to get a link on this article. ...Oscar

[alfredo]

22. Here we go

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/politics/21PRIS.html

You will need to register. It is free and relatively painless.

[ant]

24. fyi, about registering

http://www.bugmenot.com/

If people have privacy issues with registering at a site, this place will help you bypass by giving you the info for an existing account.

And while I'm at it, this site is good for a one time, disposable email address to avoid spam:
http://www.mailinator.com/mailinator/Welcome.do

[alfredo]

38. I don't worry about spam, or pop ups. They're blocked.

as far as the government, I have had a file on me since 65, so my privacy has been in the shit can for nearly 40 years.

[keithyboy]

13. I hope they sock it to Richard Perle while they are at it.

He is on a one man campaign to smear the CIA.

[MsMagnificent]

15. Can anyone provide link to NY Post article/editorial re: Hersch?

New York Post published an article or editorial trying (but failing, so I hear) to discredit Sy Hersch == I Googled for it but could not find.
Would any have a link or copy they could please send me?

Thanks!

[nightperson]

19. Here it

is, with the usual warning that Hamilton's ancient institution that gave us "Headless Body Found In Topless Bar" is currently a neocon "Mighty Wurlitzer".

[cliss]

16. Here's my take on the situation:

I read that when Karl Rove or Scooter Libby leaked the name of Valerie Plame to the press, the CIA declared war on the Bush Administration. They were going to get revenge, no matter how long it took.

Of course, there was the small matter of Cheney creating his own "mini-CIA" which would distort the facts and concoct fairy tales, just for Mr. Cheney & Bush.

It also seemed to me that George Tenet had a sly smile on his face when he had to go testify before a closed-door committee meeting after the niger uranium scandal last summer.

It's also true that the CIA had been warning BushCo about Chalabi. I just read the entire article (25 pages! whew) on CounterPunch yesterday. Man, what a sleezy slime that Ahmed really is.

The BeelzeBush administration, however, ignored the facts and and "stood by their man". So now, Chalabi's about to get flushed down the toilet because he was planning a coup of his own in Iraq, and the US government deemed him a "hot potato" so he has to go.

In the meantime, I would not by any means say that the CIA has gotten its revenge. I think they haven't even begun to fight.

Give them some more time.....they'll get "their due" like Cheney said.

[leftchick]

28. do you have a link to the counterpunch article cliss?

thank you :)

[sundancekid]

31. was wondering the same thing, and I found it -- see link below

http://www.counterpunch.org/chalabi05202004.html

[peacetalksforall]

21. And the only other man we hear about is a cleric... and it's May 22.

So that leaves ta da ta da....Negroponte and his 3000 person staff!

Ambassador, ah, I mean, President, ah Ambassador, make that Resident?

Or, is Iraq really a new state? And Negroponte its Governor?

[Must_B_Free]

27. Mr Rumsfeld People magazine, one of the "sexiest men alive".

who knew at the time what kind of sex he was in to.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. When Conservatives Attack

being conservative, the Telegraph probably has some good contacts with administration officials. I loved this:

The judgements are harsh, but these are febrile days in the capital. Infighting over Iraq within the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill has reached such a pitch and ferocity that, according to one official within the Coalition Provisional Authority, Washington DC is now referred to as "Sunni Triangle, West".

[ngGale]

41. 'Sunni Triangle, West,' I love that part and...

from what I hear, it's not going to end until Bush is out.

[msanthrope]

32. Has anyone noticed that we are almost at the 60th anniversary...

of July 20th, 1944?

A disclaimer: while I hate GWB, I think that violence is reprehensible, and destabilizing. But I'm not crying at the thought of his dethroning being accomplished by a slow leakage of pictures, and a free and fair election.

[newyawker99]

34. Hi pacoyogi!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[bobthedrummer]

33. It should be noted that Salem Chalabi (Ahmed's nephew) was the Iraqi

that had authority for "contractors" approved to do reconstruction "business" in Iraq.

Friends of the Family
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1048205,00.html

[maddezmom]

36. wasn't he also the one who signed the warrant for al-Sadr

not sure :shrug:

[DrBB]

39. Goodness, I hope this doesn't mean Rummy will lose his spot on

...the list of "sexiest men alive." That'd be a terrible price to pay for a little peccadillo like royally fucking up the stupidest invasion in US history.

[Matilda]

40. I noticed that little aside too.

I wonder what their criterion was? Some people just get easily
excited, I guess.

[crossroads]

42. The Bush cartel is imploding!

Kerry has to do nothing but stand aside and watch these evil lying crooks destroy themselves! Just hope he can repair the damage they have done to the reputation of the US in the eyes of the world!

:grr: