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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (21802)	7/6/2003 10:34:36 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 93284

Well, I can't satisfy your desire for hard facts on the matter at hand. However, if innuendo and a historical record of black ops, treachery and "false flag" operations... Even without looking at your link, I'd be willing to place a reasonable bet on it. They've demonstrated before that they don't give a shit about American lives. Why start now? ....I think your link is at best a distraction rather than useful. There's more than enough material available directly from the Bush Administration. I'll even go farther than that. There's some down right anti-semetic sentiment on that web site and I don't wish to associate with it or even by indirect inference validate it. As long as the focus is the Israeli government, or Mossad operations, or Sharon that's fine. I don't deal in using phrases like Jews, Orthodox Jews, Zionist Jews or any source that does. jttmab

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (21802)	7/6/2003 12:28:11 PM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

British Government Clashes With the BBC Charges Fly as Blair's Defender Denies Reporter's Accusations on Iraq Dossier By Glenn Frankel Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, July 6, 2003; Page A15 LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair's government is locked in an unusually bitter and personal struggle with the BBC over the accuracy of a journalist's report that the government distorted intelligence information in its dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. On one side is Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's communications chief. On the other is Andrew Gilligan, a BBC defense correspondent. Their battle is over the "45-minute gap" -- the claim in a dossier published by the prime minister's office last September that Iraq could launch a biological or chemical weapon within 45 minutes of an order to use it. Gilligan reported that an unnamed intelligence official told him the claim was based on uncorroborated material from an unreliable source and was placed in the dossier at Campbell's insistence. Campbell denied the report in testimony before a parliamentary committee and on national television June 27. He was followed by a half-dozen cabinet ministers who repeated his denial. But beyond the immediate conflict is a clash between two powerful and much-criticized institutions. Blair's government is battling accusations that it misled Parliament and members of the Labor Party in persuading them to support an unpopular war. Meanwhile, the BBC is under fire from critics who contend that some of its coverage of the war and its aftermath has been skewed against the government and the Bush administration. Blair, who was President Bush's strongest international ally in the campaign against Iraq, published two intelligence dossiers to support his stance. The first, released last September and citing Britain's top-secret Joint Intelligence Committee as its principal source, focused on allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and repeated the 45-minute claim four times. The second report, published in February, was later dubbed the "dodgy dossier" after it was found to contain information lifted from a PhD dissertation that was more than a decade old. The prime minister's office has insisted the report was accurate, but has apologized for the way it was produced. In late May came Gilligan's report, which cited a "senior" and "credible" source who said the government had added the 45-minute claim to the dossier. While testifying last week before the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, Gilligan said he had asked his source what had happened and got a single word in reply: "Campbell." Gilligan then said, "I asked, 'What do you mean? Campbell made it up?' "He answered, 'No, it was real information but it was included in the dossier against our wishes. It was a single source and it was not reliable.' " In his testimony, Campbell denied Gilligan's accusations, and repeated his charges June 27 on the Channel 4 News. In an interview published Sunday in the Observer, Blair said: "You could not make a more serious charge against a prime minister that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence information that I falsified. The charge happens to be wrong." BBC governors are to meet Sunday night to examine whether the allegations aired in its report were false, according to the Reuters news agency. The BBC has stood by its story. After receiving a letter from Campbell demanding a retraction, BBC news director Richard Sambrook sent a nine-page response accusing Downing Street of seeking "to intimidate the BBC in its reporting of events leading up to the war and during the course of the war itself." Campbell responded in a statement, dismissing Sambrook's comments as "sophistry and weasel words." On Thursday, the Guardian newspaper published details of a confidential letter from Campbell to the parliamentary committee that explained 11 changes he suggested last September to the Joint Intelligence Committee about the dossier. The 45-minute claim was not among them. A spokesman for the prime minister's office said the letter vindicated Campbell's position but also showed that Campbell, a political appointee, was involved in the drafting process for a purportedly apolitical intelligence report. A prominent BBC news producer said the corporation, a quasi-public body financed largely by television license fees paid annually by viewers, was not distressed by the controversy But a former BBC reporter said some unease remained within the organization over Gilligan's reporting. © 2003 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com