Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-

[radfringe]

Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/11/wsept11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/11/ixnewstop.html
By Julian Coman in Washington -- 7/11/2004

A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'eda, according to the Senate intelligence committee.

The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee's review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday.

According to dramatic testimony contained in the annexe, Mr Feith's cell undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq's alleged al-Qa'eda links within the highest levels of the Bush administration.

[Hekate]

1. kick

:kick: :kick: :kick:

Hekate

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

2. This has been known...

... for some time now. I am glad it is getting more coverage because Feith and Cambone were the "interceptors" of DIA and CIA information for the White House and were allowed to decide "what was relevant and what was not" to their cause.

Anyway... :kick:

[shraby]

3. Bout time the genie

got out of the bottle officially. Now if the domestic papers pick it up and spread it around it would be great.

[Cooley Hurd]

4. CNN.com picked this up...

Pentagon's prewar intelligence role questioned

<snip>
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday that they want to know whether the Pentagon knowingly withheld information from the CIA and ran a secret intelligence-gathering operation in building a case for invading Iraq.

Their comments came two days after the committee released an independent, bipartisan report condemning flawed prewar intelligence that said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. (Full story)

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," the committee's chairman and vice chairman, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas and Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, respectively, expressed concern over actions by the Defense Intelligence Agency and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

Roberts cited false information on Iraq that the Bush administration had taken from a source code-named Curveball.
</snip>

They actually named the OSP specifically (further down in the article)!

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Here's the lowdown on OSP from Karen Kwiatkowski

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

The Lie Factory


Late last year, a special Mother Jones investigation detailed how, only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

<snip>

The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power. In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to one of the participants in the meeting? -- and officials all the way down the line started to get the message, long before 9/11. Indeed, the Bush team at the Pentagon hadn't even been formally installed before Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense, and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, began putting together what would become the vanguard for regime change in Iraq.

[TahitiNut]

6. It seems clear that Feith/Cambone/OSP also 'ran' Chalabi ...

... and the INC as a disinformation operation. The furor over Chalabi's relationship with Iran and his access to classified US intellegence goes directly back to the OSP and their ideologically-oriented disinformation operations.

Let's also not forget that General (Xtian Crusader) Boykin is part and parcel of OSP. A zealous 'True Believer' promoted by the Busholini Regime, he's the poster child for reichbot sycophants in the military.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. They also re-wrote the NIE that's currently being blamed on the CIA...

...the OSP is a creature of the NeoCons in both the Pentagon and the White House.

[riverwalker]

8. Doug Feith: spread the name

the average American still is unaware of who he is and the role he has had in the war in Iraq and the the torture policies. He is still under the radar and needs to be in the headlights of the public.

"Joe Conason of Salon reports that Scott Horton, a partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler and chair of the Committee on International Law was told by "senior" members of the Judge Advocate General Corps that high ranking political appointees were behind the abuse. Says Conason:
Indeed, Horton says that the JAG officers specifically warned him that Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith,one of the most powerful political appointees in the Pentagon, had significantly weakened the military's rules and regulations governing prisoners of war. The officers told Horton that Feith and the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II, were creating "an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" that would allow mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Douglas Feith, President Bush's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy — and number three man at the Pentagon — reporetdly summed up Protocol One of the Geneva Conventions of 1977 as "law in the service of terrorism".

http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000842.php

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x678679

[riverwalker]

10. Filthy Feith

http://www.aaiusa.org/news/must_read11_06_03.htm

"The OSP also excluded many top Mideast experts from the State Department from playing any role in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. And it is Feith's office that, with the CPA, recommended companies for huge, and in some cases no-bid, contracts in Iraq that have amounted, in the eyes of some critical lawmakers, to flagrant profiteering. Among the firms that have profited most are those whose consultants or officers also serve on the Pentagon's DPB, members of which are chosen by Feith.

In a particularly provocative move that raises a host of conflict-of-interest questions, Feith's former partner Zell has set up shop with Chalabi's nephew in Baghdad to help interested companies win contracts for reconstruction projects."

"Among other clients, his law firm represented arms giants Lockheed-Martin and Northrop Grunman."

[Moderator]

11. Duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x678679