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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (19812)	6/2/2003 11:27:15 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

CIA reported to believe Saddam is alive ___________________________________ By Richard Sale UPI Intelligence Correspondent From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk Published 6/2/2003 6:27 PM The CIA has internal documents that make clear Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is alive and hiding in greater Baghdad, protected by an underground resistance network of tribesmen and former Baath officials, administration officials told United Press International. "There is a resistance network and it is stronger than we originally thought," one administration source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Saddam is moving around inside Iraq and he's got a lot of support," another U.S. government official said. He added: "A lot of what is being reported in the press as `looting' is in fact sabotage by Baath party stay-behind groups." The underground Baath resistance is made up of former party officials who are funded with money looted from the Iraqi treasury, this source said. "There is credible evidence that Saddam is still alive and being sheltered," said former CIA chief Vince Cannistraro. A CIA spokesman did not respond to requests for comment by UPI. Angelo Codevilla, former senior member of the Senate intelligence committee and now a Middle East expert at Boston University, said that the millions in $100 bills looted just before the start of the war "indicated that Saddam had long planned to simply go underground. It was not a hasty decision." Administration officials said U.S. forces in Iraq are conducting searches for Saddam in greater Baghdad and in "a small town" just north of the city. According to U.S. intelligence officials, Saddam and his entourage simply move in with a private family. Members of the family, including children, are taken as hostages so that no other family member will be tempted to inform on Saddam's whereabouts. These sources said that when Saddam is ready to move to another safe house, the hostages are returned and the family is paid as much as $50,000 for the temporary use of their home. Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, No. 25 on the U.S. list of most wanted Iraqis who was taken into custody April 25, was quoted in a USA Today story as telling U.S. interrogators that he had seen Saddam alive after two U.S. airstrikes mounted to kill him. Aziz's statements "bolstered sketchy information flowing into U.S. intelligence" that Saddam survived the March 19 and April 7 airstrikes targeting him and his sons, the story said. Some 15 other former Iraqi officials are being interrogated in Kuwait, U.S. intelligence officials told UPI. Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi opposition leader, also claimed in a recent TV interview that he believes that Saddam and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are both alive although he did not elaborate on his evidence. upi.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (19812)	6/3/2003 10:56:19 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Standard Operating Procedure __________________________________ By PAUL KRUGMAN Columnist The New York Times 6/3/03 nytimes.com The mystery of Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction has become a lot less mysterious. Recent reports in major British newspapers and three major American news magazines, based on leaks from angry intelligence officials, back up the sources who told my colleague Nicholas Kristof that the Bush administration "grossly manipulated intelligence" about W.M.D.'s. And anyone who talks about an "intelligence failure" is missing the point. The problem lay not with intelligence professionals, but with the Bush and Blair administrations. They wanted a war, so they demanded reports supporting their case, while dismissing contrary evidence. In Britain, the news media have not been shy about drawing the obvious implications, and the outrage has not been limited to war opponents. The Times of London was ardently pro-war; nonetheless, it ran an analysis under the headline "Lie Another Day." The paper drew parallels between the selling of the war and other misleading claims: "The government is seen as having `spun' the threat from Saddam's weapons just as it spins everything else." Yet few have made the same argument in this country, even though "spin" is far too mild a word for what the Bush administration does, all the time. Suggestions that the public was manipulated into supporting an Iraq war gain credibility from the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts. Am I exaggerating? Even as George Bush stunned reporters by declaring that we have "found the weapons of mass destruction," the Republican National Committee declared that the latest tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes." That is simply a lie. You've heard about those eight million children denied any tax break by a last-minute switcheroo. In total, 50 million American households — including a majority of those with members over 65 — get nothing; another 20 million receive less than $100 each. And a great majority of those left behind do pay taxes. And the bald-faced misrepresentation of an elitist tax cut offering little or nothing to most Americans is only the latest in a long string of blatant misstatements. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team on issues ranging from tax policy and Social Security reform to energy and the environment. So why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy? It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we've become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies. If this same lack of accountability extends to matters of war and peace, we're in very deep trouble. The British seem to understand this: Max Hastings, the veteran war correspondent — who supported Britain's participation in the war — writes that "the prime minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit, and it stinks." It's no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. I could point out that many of the neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980's. But the important point is that this isn't about Saddam: it's about us. The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history — worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra. Indeed, the idea that we were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility. But here's the thought that should make those commentators really uncomfortable. Suppose that this administration did con us into war. And suppose that it is not held accountable for its deceptions, so Mr. Bush can fight what Mr. Hastings calls a "khaki election" next year. In that case, our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted.