Month: November 2005

Douglas Jehl’s revelations in the New York Times today:

A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

And how was this garbage “intelligence” obtained? Well, we already know that al-Libi is practically a poster boy for the Cheney/Bush Torture Regime:

Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere – Pakistan turns Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan national, over to US authorities. Libi is believed to have run the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan for al-Qaeda. Interrogations start and a debate soon erupts with regard to which methods can be employed. The CIA advocates threatening him with his life and that of his family. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004] The CIA’s actions are, according to Newsweek, facilitated by a February 2002 secret presidential order “authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention facilities outside the US and to use extra harsh interrogation methods” (see After February 7, 2002). [Newsweek, 5/24/2004] Some time after his handover to the US, Al-Libi is rendered to Egypt. According to an ex-FBI official, the CIA “duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo. At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, ‘You’re going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I’m going to find your mother and I’m going to f*** her.’ ” [Newsweek, 6/21/2004] Al-Libi is said to provide the US with valuable intelligence including information about an alleged plot to blow up the US Embassy in Yemen with a truck bomb and the location of Abu Zubaida, who will be captured in March 2002 (see March 28, 2002). The FBI has thus far taken the lead in interrogations of terrorist suspects, because its agents are the ones with most experience. The CIA’s success with Al-Libi contributes to the shift of interrogations from the bureau to the CIA. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004] Such methods as making death threats, advocated by the CIA, are opposed by the FBI, which is used to limiting its questioning techniques so the results from interrogations can be used in court. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004] “We don’t believe in coercion,” a senior FBI official says. [The Guardian, 9/13/2004]

The argument over whether the various nations of North and South America should be forced together under the auspices of global capitalism or global socialism came to an ugly head today at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina as anti-capitalist provocateurs, of the professional and amateur varieties, decided to do their best to destroy the effective use of peaceful protests against state power.

Originally, there was a peaceful march of tens of thousands in opposition to the terribly misnamed Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the Iraq war. Then, according to the CNN, after Hugo Chavez gave his soccer stadium speech denouncing Bush and the FTAA, the “anarchists” showed up and started smashing windows and setting fires. There was massive rioting throughout the city, and some of the violence even spread to neighboring Uruguay.

How to fight injustice and poverty? Break anything that looks like someone was able to save up for it. Smart.

Here comes another round of letters equating us with them…

It should be to the everlasting shame of all Americans that a Communist demagogue like Chavez has even the slightest bit of credibility in contrast to George W. Bush. It takes a real loser in the role of “leader of the free world” who not only can’t convince people of the benefits of open markets, but instead provokes massive destruction simply by showing up.

Update: Okay, okay, Chavez is a “socialist” not a “communist.” Government is government. Geez.

Update II: “I have been a Maoist since I entered military school.” From the speech “Capitalism is Savagery” by Hugo Chavez.

Update III: Attention Leftists! Before you write me some inchoherent speil about how I am the world’s biggest supporter of American Empire and all its interventions in South America, scroll up and copy to your clipboard the part where I even came near implying any such thing. Even better, read this. Thank you for your careful attention.

Laura Rozen’s “war and piece” weblog is one of my favorite stops on the internet: that’s because she is incredibly well-informed and her interests roughly approximate my own. And she’s been all over the Niger uranium forgery story. However, I must take issue with her recent post questioning Martin Walker’s October 24 piece, and my own column detailing the same story, in which I wrote:

” A parliamentary committee was charged with investigating, and they issued a heavily redacted report. Now, I am told by a former CIA operations officer, the report has aroused some interest on this side of the Atlantic. According to a source in the Italian embassy, Patrick J. ‘Bulldog’ Fitzgerald asked for and ‘has finally been given a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document.”

Laura, however, is having none of it:

“There’s just one problem: Not only has Fitzgerald not received such a report or even indicated he has any interest in one. There is no Italian parliamentary report, published or unpublished, on the Niger forgeries. In fact, until today, there has been no Italian parliamentary investigation of the Niger forgeries, or the claim promoted by the Italian military intelligence organization Sismi to the CIA and other western intelligence agencies that Iraq was seeking vast quantities of yellowcake uranium in Niger.”

One has to wonder how Laura can have such certain knowledge of what Fitzgerald has or has not requested. Ah, but if there is no such report — and she cites the head of the Italian intelligence oversignt committee, one Enzo Bianco, denying it — then how can Fitzgerald have requested it? There is, here, perhaps some confusion as to the nature of the “report” — is it official, or is it just a transcript of a hearing? I think this guy, whoever he is, has the right idea.

Giovanni D’Avanzo, writing in La Repubblica [November 3], poses a few questions to Senor Bianco’s oversight committee, and in the course of them avers:

“Sometime after October 9, 2002, a team of SISMI agents are ordered to keep Rocco Martino under close surveillance … Why was no surveillance memo or report issued to judicial investigators on Rocco Martino, who is investigated by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s office in 2003, until the fall of 2004?”

So there was an investigation, albeit not by the Italian parliament but by Rome’s public prosecutor. It could be that this is what both Walker’s and my own sources are referring to.

Laura cites several other skeptics, including a reporter for La Repubblica and “a former U.S. official recently in Italy,” who say this story is “the echo of a rumor put out by people back the States.” She also cites Vince Cannistraro, “who at one time heard rumors of such a report from Italian sources,” and who

“Now says there doesn’t appear to be a parliamentary report either. ‘There is no published report,”’Cannistraro told me Monday. ‘If there is a report, we might expect it would have some analysis and conclusions. There is no report, at least not a published report. …I think this stuff is just getting circulated.'”

Of course it isn’t published — that’s the whole point.

Yes, it’s true, as Laura says, that the Italians aren’t too eager to have the blame pinned on SISMI — but that doesn’t mean SISMI isn’t involved. And some Italians — the left-wing opposition coalition, for example — might be understandably eager to expose the scandal in the run-up to Italy’s elections scheduled for next year.

Laura goes into the Italian role in creating and disseminating these documents, referring to the La Repubblica series on the subject, but somehow neglects to mention the crucial American angle — and the key role of American neocons, i.e. Michael Ledeen, in funneling the information contained in the Niger forgeries to Washington. Someone legitimized these fake documents by doing an end run around the CIA and the mainstream intelligence community, and injected a fabrication into the American intelligence stream. Who was it? La Repubblica fingers the Office of Special Plans, and names names, including Ledeen, Harold Rhode, and Larry Franklin, the confessed spy for Israel.

Laura goes on to write:

“It’s understandable people spin conspiracy theories without real answers. And given credible reports of the role of Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress in putting forward other bogus Iraq intelligence claims and defectors with made-up legends to the western media and western governments, much of it stovepiped directly to receptive Pentagon hawks and the Office of the Vice President, suspicion remains high. Without a comprehensive investigation of policymakers’ use of Iraq intelligence, such as that promised but not delivered by the Senate Select Intelligence committee, and now demanded by Senate Democrats, these questions, rumors and conspiracy theories are certain to persist.”

“Conspiracy theories”? Excuse me, but we are talking about someone deliberately falsifying “intelligence” based on a forgery The mere existence of these forgeries and their prominence in setting us on the path to war is prima facie evidence of a campaign of deception aimed at lying us into war with Iraq. You can call this a “conspiracy theory” if you want — but then again, you might also call it the history of a scam.

I trust my source, and I furthermore think it’s unimportant whether this information is coming from the Italian parliament or Rome’s public prosecutor: the point is that the information is there, and it’s getting out. Antiwar.com stands by its story.

A report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the latest developments in the AIPAC spy case notes that “defense sources say they have reason to believe that the defendants’ relationship with a New York Times reporter might have been monitored.”

Could this possibly refer to She Of The Turning Aspens? Read on ….

As I pointed out here, the indictment against AIPAC chief lobbyist Steve Rosen and his sidekick, AIPAC policy analyst Keith Weissman, details one incident that occurred on June 3, 2003, when the Pentagon’s top Iran policy analyst, Larry Franklin met with Israeli diplomat Naor Gilon at the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club:

“The discussion centered on a specific person, not in the United Status government, and her thoughts concerning the nuclear program of the Middle Eastern country and, separately, certain charity, efforts in Foreign Nation A [Israel].”

At the time of the Franklin-Gilon tete-a-tete, the first inquiries into Valerie Plame’s role in sending her husband to Niger were being made, including by Walter Pincus of the Washington Post. The previous week, on May 29, Libby had made inquiries at the State Department about Plame: by the end of the first week in July, Libby was moving into high gear on the Plame matter, going to the CIA, and the State Department, and finally confirming Plame’s identity and background with Vice President Dick Cheney on June 12.

If the woman described in the AIPAC spy indictment is Judy Miller — and I’d be willing to bet the farm that it is — we have to ask: what kind of a “relationship” did Rosen and Weissman, both accused of spying for Israel, have with Scooter Libby’s confidante?

Does it bother anyone that the US government is using former Soviet gulags in Eastern Europe to torture the people they kidnap? That our leader, Dick Cheney, is actively pressuring the senate to exempt the CIA from the new torture ban as his stooge threatens to veto?

Eh, me neither.

Good news! Everything’s swell in Iraq, and getting better – so long as the U.S. stays put. How do I know? I read Cathy Young’s latest. How does she know? She read The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, and Andrew Sullivan. That’s right – after canvassing the gamut of foreign policy viewpoints from A to B, Young assures us that “Iraqis have grounds to hope for a better future” and favorably compares the continued occupation of Iraq with the defeat of Nazism.

I was relieved when former Reason editor-in-chief (and born-again neocon) Virginia Postrel left the magazine, but at least she decried the tyranny of the “Lethal Center,” the “coming together of ‘pragmatic’ liberals and ‘responsible’ conservatives” behind the interventionist state.