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Friday, October 03, 2003 |
Paul Reynolds' assessment
Paul Reynolds, BBC foreign affairs correspondent reports that no matter how you spin the kay report, British intelligence reports on Iraq were way off the mark. He says that "it appears therefore that the reputation of the intelligence organisation is going to have to be reassessed." Sounds like the British intelligence MI6 is in for some heavy criticism. Read his balanced assessment.
12:09:36 AM 
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Thursday, October 02, 2003 |
Jack Straw's spin on the Kay report
The BBC reports that "Mr Straw said these finds showed the military action taken by the United States and the UK was "justified and essential". " Fewer and fewer people believe that. Sometimes those at the top are the last to know, or at least the last to admit. BBC report.
11:55:30 PM
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New poll shows most Americans believe Iraq war not worth it
Reuters reports today that a recent CBS/New York Times poll shows that "most Americans now believe the Iraq war was not worth it..." The public is slowly coming around. Read the report.
11:47:04 PM
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No WMD still
Dr. David Kay, who leads the US weapons inspection team in Iraq reported today that no weapons of mass destruction have been found. The AP news reports that Kay reported that "...his team had found only limited evidence of any chemical weapons effort ... and there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way."
David Sanger of the New York Times says "...that nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world. " Read his analysis.
Of course Dr. Kay needs more time. The AP also reaffirms that "the administration is asking for $600 million to continue the hunt for conclusive evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, according to congressional officials." I guess now that it is US inspectors we have all the time in the world. They are still looking for the Loch Ness monster too. Go to the AP new report.
11:43:15 PM
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This helps explain the furor
A New York Times article offer one explanation of the recent furor over the possible illegal disclosure of the name of a CIA operative who just happened to be Joseph Wilson's wife back in July. A the the Times puts it, this is a struggle that "... pits intelligence professionals, especially analysts and operations officers at the C.I.A. who say they believe that information about the Iraqi weapons programs was deliberately hyped and distorted by the Bush administration in the months before the war, against officials at the White House and Pentagon who have long been dismissive of what they see as an overly cautious culture at the agency."
If senior White House officials did disclose the name as a means to discredit Wilson or simply to get revenge for his speaking out, we have a serious, serious problem in the administration.
The Times article provides a very good analysis of the current situation.
1:07:54 PM
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003 |
Schism in Blair's Labour party?
The Chrisitan Science Monitor reports that Blairs speech at the Annual Labour Party convention was not well received by a significant number of party members. Domestic issues are preeminent but Blair's unpopular stand on Iraq has degraded public trust and weakened support for him and his party. (Read the entire article.)
Even within his own party some apparently are calling for him to step down. I suspect that if Blair goes, his Iraq policies and UK support for the US occupation will undergo some change. This will possibly leave the US even more isolated and American taxpayers with an even larger bill.
11:32:56 PM
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Why now?
The furor has risen suddenly, a tornado from nowhere, about the leak of the name of Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. Her name first appeared back in July in Robert Novaks's column (which I don't remember reading) in which Novak pointed to the Whitehouse as the source of the information. (Read the original July 14 article).
Leaks are the staple of Washington, but in this case there might be a serious breach of the law which prohibits making public the name of intelligence operatives. Her real role is not clear to me at this time. The CIA apparently filed a report back in July with the FBI and requested an investigation. Now the Justice Department and the FBI are investigating and Democrats are calling for an independent counsel. According to a Washington Post poll, a majority of the public favors an independent investigation.
Wilson himself accused Carl Rove as the source of the disclosure and there are claims that the it was motivated by revenge to get back at Wilson, a career diplomat who held a prominent position in the Clinton administration. Time.com carried an article back in July and asked the question: "A War on Wilson?". This article notes Novak's column and states that "...some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews ...that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." so the word was being spread. Read the article.
The President has vowed to get to the bottom of the issue. At the same time, Democrats are questioning whether the administration in the person of John Ashcroft can investigate itself in an unbiased manner. The NY Times details some very close ties that link John Ashcroft to Carl Rove and other Whitehouse officials.
Looks like payback time. Novak has written another column (which I read this time) to try and stem the rising backlash against the administration.
11:04:41 PM
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Monday, September 29, 2003 |
How has George Bush avoided Tony Blair's difficulties?
This is the question posed by Tom Carver of the BBC. After all, Tony Blair only made one egregious overstatement, that Saddam Hussein could mount a biological or chemical weapons attack within 45 minutes. The Bush administration made many more allegations that have subsequently been discredited. These include the more sweeping claims that Iraq was 6-9 months away from a nuclear capability, that it had weapons of mass destruction at the ready and that there was a linkage between 9/11, Al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. The more specific supporting "evidence" such as the purchase of aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment and uranium 'yellowcake' purchases from Niger, turned out to be clearly bogus.
Carver concludes that "In the end, George Bush did not need the intelligence to make his case, in the same way that Tony Blair did. After going through the trauma of 11 September, Mr Bush knew that if he told the American people he needed to attack Iraq they would support him." (See Carver's entire article.)
So where does the problem lie? With the people, or with the President?
10:52:41 AM
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Friday, September 26, 2003 |
Air Force assessment of Iraqi UAV capability at odds with what the Bush administration said in their campaign for war
The Washington Post reports on a US Air Force assessment of the capabilities and purpose or Iraq's fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles. The administration in building its justification for war relied on a DIA and CIA assessment that the Iraqi UAV's were designed to deliver chemical and biological weapons. What the administration didn't say was that the Air Force "...had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons."
See the full article. These revelations support the contention that the administration seized upon every shred of "intelligence" to bolster its case as fact, but did not acknowledge any competing interpretations that would illuminate the tenuousness of many of the conclusions that they reached.
12:32:00 AM
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Lord Hutton inquiry
The BBC reports that the first phase of the inquiry into the death of Dr. Kelly precipitated by the squabble between the BBC and the UK government has concluded. Expect the final report in Novermber or December. We'll see what the public reaction is then. In the meantime, check out the BBC report.
12:13:45 AM
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Thursday, September 25, 2003 |
The devil is in the details
The Washington Post reports that even the GOP is getting nervous about the President's $87 billion spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan. The issue of the 20 or so billion dollars for reconstruction is growing more contentious. The devil is in the details and some of the details are bedeviling even staunch conservative supporters of the President. As the Post reports:
"Those details include $100 million to build seven planned communities with a total of 3,258 houses, plus roads, an elementary school, two high schools, a clinic, a place of worship and a market for each; $10 million to finance 100 prison-building experts for six months, at $100,000 an expert; 40 garbage trucks at $50,000 each; $900 million to import petroleum products such as kerosene and diesel to a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves; and $20 million for a four-week business course, at $10,000 per pupil."
Read the Post report and make up your own mind. The graph from the Post article provides a breakdown of the funding request.
11:43:10 PM
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Whither the UN?
BBC online reports today that despite American claims that security in Iraq is improving, the UN will further reduce its presence in the country. Some 600 UN personnel were stationed in Iraq before the first bomb attack on August 19 in which 22 UN workers were killed. UN presence was reduced to around 100 after the attack. There are currently 86 UN personnel in Iraq and the number will be decreased even more over the next few weeks.
BBC Online says that "The decision is a blow to United States' claims that the security situation in Iraq is under control, and is likely to undermine efforts by US President George W Bush to increase the UN role in Iraqi reconstruction." Who needs the UN anyway? Read the whole article.
James P. Rubin, in an article "Stumbling into war" that appeared in the September/October 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs put it this way: "When it comes to occupying a country, there is simply no substitute for a UN stamp of approval." The New York Times has reprinted the article as post mortem analysis of the failed US efforts to garner more international support for its attack on Iraq. (James P. Rubin is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000.)
Kofi Annan has suggested reform of the UN, particulary the Security Council. He wants it expanded. No wonder Gerhard Schroeder was nice to George Bush in New York earlier this week. The BBC offers an analysis of the Annan's call for reform. Read it.
3:03:12 PM
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Did we get anything right about Iraq?
Things are not just going well in Iraq for the US, much less for the Iraqis themselves. Electricity for one thing has not even reached pre-attack levels and is not likely to for some time to come. This seems to result from a combination of poor planning by the US, sabotage and looting by Iraqis. But more fundamentally, early failure on the part of the US to accurately assess the conditions in Iraq and the slow reaction to the reality in Iraq has led to the present catastrophic deterioration. An article in today's Washington Post by Rajiv Chandrasekaran quotes an American electrical engineer currently working with the occupation forces as saying that " 'If they had recognized the problem sooner and devoted more resources to it, the problem wouldn't be as bad as it is now.' "
We knew Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but we didn't know how badly deteriorated the infrastructure was. At least this is the only conclusion I can draw after reading the article in the Washington Post . According to the article, "U.S. officials insist that in the months before the Iraq war, the signs of trouble were impossible to see. 'This was a closed-off, Stalinist society,' one U.S. official here said. 'We knew there were repairs that were needed, but we had no idea just how bad things were.'
But the UN knew about the condition of Iraq's power generation system and released and publicly reported that Iraq's power generating infrastructure was " 'technically and economically obsolete.' "
So now the US taxpayer is being asked to completely rebuild the electrical infrastructure. The price tag for starting represents $5.7 billion of the $87 billion requested by the President.
Read the entire article.
2:39:49 PM
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Monday, September 15, 2003 |
Down the rabbit hole
Joseph Wilson wrote an article that appeared in the San Jose Mercury's Perspective section yesterday. Wilson is the diplomat sent to Niger in West Africa in February of 2002 to check out the allegation that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium 'yellowcake' for nuclear weapons construction. His article is worth reading. Wilson pleads for honesty from the American government but in the meantime has put his copy of "Alice in Wonderland" back on his desk.
Based on VP Cheney's appearance yesterday on 'Meet the Press', that is not likely to happen any time soon. See the Washington Post. Cheney vigorously maintained that we are making good progress in Iraq, denied any miscalculations on the part of the administration and sees little need for a change of course. There was at least a dose of reality for Cheney apparently believes the costs of maintaining operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could increase beyond the $160 billion or so now either spent or earmarked. Pretty soon we'll be talking about real money.
David Firestone of the New York Times analyzes the impact of the costs in Iraq and Afghanistan on the US public. (See analysis). Firestone reports that after President Bush's Sunday speech outlining the pending request for $87 billion for next fiscal year "Administration officials acknowledged the next day that every dollar of that cost will be borrowed, a loan that economists say will be repaid by the next generation of taxpayers and the generation after that. The $166 billion cost of the work so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has stunned many in Washington, will be added to what was already the largest budget deficit the nation has ever known."
'It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!' said Alice.
11:00:16 AM
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© Copyright 2004 Newsboyz.
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