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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (1930)	6/6/2003 4:25:53 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 20773

Barbs aside, 9/11 questions aren't going away thestar.com [Note: Ken Pollack was a staffer on Clinton's NSC staff. He's not in government now. I'm not sure where he is wandering around in exile, though he sure got a lot of face time in front of the TV cameras while he was selling the war...] <COPY> May. 18, 2003. 01:00 AM Barbs aside, 9/11 questions aren't going away MICHELE LANDSBERG I was just listening to the latest CIA transmissions through the fillings in my molars last week when I accidentally intercepted a secret internal memo from the National Post. It went something like this: "Post readership hits bottom, journalistic integrity under question, editor dumped, columnists fleeing sinking ship — attack Toronto Star writer at once!" Seriously, if I may be serious for a moment about the National Post, it was not so surprising to find myself the subject of a hostile editorial in that paper after I wrote about my unanswered 9/11 questions. The Post is a staunch voice for Bush America and brooks no dissenting voices. In tabloid fashion, it headed its editorial "Michele Landsberg Loses It." I fully expected to be labelled a "conspiracy theorist" after interviewing Vision TV's Barrie Zwicker and writing about his challenges to the official version of what happened at the World Trade Center. But I was surprised by the nature of the ensuing attacks. The Post, and the dozen or so readers who were similarly enraged by my column, didn't come up with a single argument or documented fact. It was all quivering jowls, wild insults and expostulations. The Post's entire argument, once I filtered out the verbiage ("crock", "nonsense," "comical," "embarrassing" and, that good old standby, "blinding hatred of the United States") came down to this: captured Al Qaeda commanders have confessed to the 9/11 crimes. End of story. Except that what I was asking was a little different. Few of us doubt that murderous Saudi Arabian terrorists executed this massacre. But I wanted to know more. Why did the U.S. military, with the most powerful arsenal in world history, fail to prevent or at least try to stop a series of hijackings and crashes that went on for nearly two hours? Where was the Air Force? If President Bush and his cabinet were not, at this very moment, still trying to censor, suppress and delay the publication of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, if there had been honest disclosure and straight stories from the beginning, perhaps all these "dark questions," as the Post puts it, would never have arisen. The great majority of people, sickened and overwhelmed by the horror of the attacks, unquestioningly accepts the White House version. Many thousands, however, are patiently stitching together the documented evidence and noting the huge holes in the fabric of that official story. Just ask yourself how the United States, with its vast intelligence establishment and spy power, could have been caught unawares in such a drastic state of unpreparedness on Sept. 11. President Bush, or, as he delights to call himself, the commander-in-chief, must certainly have been briefed about the ominous drumbeat of terrorist threats that were accumulating over the spring and summer of 2001. According to the report by Eleanor Hill, staff director for the Joint Inquiry, there had been "an unprecedented rise in threat" during that summer. U.S. government agencies had been warned by the intelligence community that there was a high probability of "spectacular" terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda "designed to inflict mass casualties. ... Attacks will occur with little or no warning." The warnings included the possibility that airplanes would be used as weapons. There was even an April, 2001, intelligence report that terrorists planned "a spectacular and traumatic attack" like the first World Trade Center bombing, as well as an earlier report a group of Arabs planned to fly a plane into the World Trade Center or CIA headquarters. According to Hill, these warnings went to "senior government officials" whom she was not allowed to name. On that fateful morning, the first pictures of the burning tower were broadcast at 8:48 a.m. By then, according to a carefully documented timeline at cooperativeresearch.net, the Federal Aviation Administration, NORAD (joint U.S.-Canada air defence), the Pentagon, the White House and the Secret Service all knew that three commercial passenger jets had been hijacked. <CONTNUES........>

To: Dale Baker who wrote (1930)	6/6/2003 4:34:17 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 20773

The spinmeisters still dancing as fast they can, trying to stay ahead of the facts....and run away from their own earlier studies. Pentagon 2002 Study Reported `No Reliable' Data on Iraq Weapons June 6 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. Defense Department report in September 2002 found ``no reliable information'' proving that Iraq had chemical weapons, even as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was saying the country had amassed stockpiles of the banned arms. ``There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities,'' a report by the Defense Intelligence Agency said in a summary page obtained by Bloomberg News. The unreleased report said Iraq ``probably'' had stockpiles of banned chemicals, a more tentative conclusion than Rumsfeld was presenting in public remarks. Iraq has ``amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin and mustard gas,'' he told Congress on Sept. 19. The summary from the report suggests ``substantially more uncertainty than was stated by senior administration officials,'' said Kenneth Katzman, a specialist on Iraq's military for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, who was told of the contents by Bloomberg. No banned weapons have been found in Iraq. Lawmakers in the U.S. and the U.K. are demanding to know more about the intelligence cited as a reason for invading the Mideast country in March. Biological Weapons The Defense Intelligence Agency's uncertainty about Iraqi weapons extended to germ warfare programs, the summary suggests. ``Iraq is assessed to possess biological agent stockpiles that may be weaponized and ready for use,'' its report said. ``The size of those stockpiles is uncertain and is subject to debate. The nature and condition of those stockpiles also are unknown.'' ``The DIA report suggests that before the Iraq War, the U.S. intelligence community did not have hard evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed large stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents that posed an imminent threat to U.S. national security,'' said Jonathan Tucker, a senior research fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace and former United Nations weapons inspector, also informed of the summary page contents by Bloomberg. The Defense Intelligence Agency's findings in the report, ``Iraq: Key Weapons Facilities -- An Operational Support Study,'' are similar to those of other reports by the agency on Iraq's suspect weapons programs, a U.S. military intelligence official said. Existence of the study was disclosed by U.S. News & World Report in its June 9 edition. Judgments Defended Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials say the weapons will be found after the allies locate people in Saddam Hussein's regime who know where they're hidden. Some officials, including Rumsfeld, have said Hussein may have shipped the weapons out of Iraq or destroyed them. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said yesterday that agency director George Tenet stands by his Feb. 12 statement to Congress that ``stockpiles of things he (Hussein) has not declared and weapons he has not declared,'' will be found. U.S. defense officials on Wednesday defended pre-war judgments, such as those in the September 2002 report, as consistent with statements made by officials in the administration of President Bill Clinton. ``It's pretty clear that the intelligence judgments concerning Iraq weapons of mass destruction did not undergo a major change between the Clinton and Bush administrations,'' Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith told reporters at a Pentagon press conference in Arlington, Virginia. Powell at UN The CIA is reviewing its pre-war assessment to determine whether it overstated the threat posed by Hussein's weapons in response to ``hawks'' in the Pentagon, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The Washington Post said yesterday that some CIA analysts felt pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and his top aide, Lewis Libby. Cheney's office declined to comment, the Post said. In the U.K., Prime Minister Tony Blair is under pressure to produce evidence underpinning his claims of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Blair said yesterday that he would produce ``all'' that evidence and he repeated denials that he embellished it. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Feb. 5 gave the United Nations transcripts of intercepted telephone and radio communications, satellite photographs and statements from Iraqi defectors that he said proved Iraq had an active program of banned- weapons production. The war began six weeks later. Last Updated: June 6, 2003 00:08 EDT

To: Dale Baker who wrote (1930)	6/6/2003 7:46:33 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Currently he's at something called the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Was a CIA analyst who predicted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Was director for Persian Gulf Affairs at the NSC during the Clinton administration. Though out of government, was a powerful voice arguing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Has been critical of Bush administration handling of Iraq since the end of the war - not enough troops to restore order quickly, etc. ..people who put in time on the ground over many years. We repeat this mistake over and over and over and just keep doing it. Are you talking about people like April Glaspie?