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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (21205)	6/16/2004 4:32:17 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 80950

Re: Then why doesn't he point his finger at the real culprits? Is he still chicken? It's quite clear that Tenet was doing only what he had to, like a good soldier. And still is. So if Powell wants to come clean... But Powell doesn't have to "come clean"!! Secr of State Powell's been clean all along: he didn't devise the Iraq war nor did he beat the drums for it. If anything, Veep Cheney is the one who's got to "come clean"... Actually, it was up to Cheney --not Powell-- to come to the UN and fast-talk the UNSC into passing resolution 1441.

To: sea_urchin who wrote (21205)	6/16/2004 2:42:35 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 80950

> he's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. And here's another "fall guy" -- Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. 212.2.162.45 >>The American general who was in charge of Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib was today involved in an astonishing war of words with her superiors, who accused her of lying. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski claimed in a BBC radio interview she was being made a scapegoat for the abuse of inmates and said her successor once told her prisoners should be treated “like dogs.” She said Major General Geoffrey Miller – who was in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and now oversees US prisons in Iraq – told her last autumn that prisoners “are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you’ve lost control of them.” But Lieutenant Colonel, Barry Johnson, a spokesman for US detention operations in Iraq, said Miller “made no such comment to Brigadier General Karpinski or to anybody else.” “This allegation flies in the face of the philosophy of humane treatment for all detainees, under all circumstances, that Major General Miller adopted first at Guantanamo, and now at his position in Iraq,” he said. ”Karpinski’s statement to the media is categorically false.”<< Tell that to the Marines!

To: sea_urchin who wrote (21205)	7/8/2004 4:56:31 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 80950

Re: ...Or even resign, as Tenet did. There's no doubt that the longer Powell remains in the administration, the more "coffee" will fall on him. Well, looks like all the coffee has spilled over in Tenet's lap.... CIA attacked for 'gross exaggeration' of Saddam's WMD threat in official US report By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 08 July 2004 The CIA was braced yesterday for a fiercely critical Congressional report expected to place primary blame on the agency for the pre-war intelligence debacle over Iraq's still-unfound weapons of mass destruction. The preliminary report, by the Senate Committee on Intelligence, is to be published today or tomorrow. Its central charge is that the CIA grossly exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, ignoring the paucity of its own findings on Iraqi's WMD capabilities. Indeed, knowledge that a public savaging was on the way may have been the final straw persuading George Tenet to resign last month after a seven-year stint as CIA director marked by as string of major intelligence failures, most notably the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks and to find Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapon programmes. The Senate report is said to fault the CIA in three main areas: its disregard for claims by relatives of Iraqi scientists that Saddam had abandoned his WMD ambitions, a reliance on bogus information from defectors, and its insistence that aluminium tubes bound for Iraq and seized in 2001, were proof that Saddam was reconstituting his nuclear programme. The New York Times said relatives of the scientists repeatedly told the CIA that the WMD programmes had been scrapped, but the agency failed to report this to President George Bush as he travelled the country warning of the deadly threat posed by Baghdad. How and where the CIA made contact with the relatives is unclear. But from 2000 on they are said to have told the agency the programmes had been dropped. The CIA did not believe them, a spokesman telling the paper "no useful information" had been collected. Defectors also duped the CIA, which continued to believe one Iraqi claiming knowledge of Saddam's biological weapons, even after it had been warned by the Defence Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon that he was almost certainly peddling false information. Other defectors were provided by Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress who is in disgrace with the Bush administration because the INC had fed false information that exaggerated the WMD threat. Finally, the CIA is portrayed as the main promoter of aluminium tubes as evidence. It said such pipes were intended for centrifuges to enrich uranium for use in Iraqi nuclear weapons. In fact, experts at both the US atomic laboratories and in the State Department's own intelligence bureau were highly doubtful that the tubes were of sufficient quality for centrifuges. But the CIA prevailed. Overruling his in-house specialists, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, went to the United Nations in February 2003 to make his now-infamous presentation about Saddam's presumed weapons, basing his nuclear programme case on the aluminium tubes. The Senate report may, however, have one unexpected consequence: an early nomination by President Bush of a director to replace Mr Tenet. It had been assumed that the White House would delay its choice until after the election, to avoid confirmation hearings at which the WMD fiasco would be revisited at the height of the presidential election campaign. But those fears seem to have receded, not least because the report largely exonerates the present White House of the charge that it hyped the Iraq threat, pinning the blame instead on an agency headed by a man who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997. Another argument gaining ground is that it would be dangerous to leave the CIA with a weakened leadership when US intelligence specialists are openly fearful of further terrorist attacks. John McLaughlin, the deputy director who takes over as a caretaker when Mr Tenet formally steps down at the weekend, is also seen as part of a discredited old guard. James Pavitt, the deputy director in charge of clandestine operations, is also retiring. Mr Tenet's reputation also suffered a grievous blow with his pre-war assurance to President Bush, reported in Plan of Attack, the 2004 book by the journalist Bob Woodward, that the CIA had "slam-dunk" proof Saddam still possessed WMD. The agency, and by extension Mr Tenet, are accused of doing a poor job of gathering evidence about Iraq's alleged illicit weapons, and of wrongly evaluating what little they did have. The leading candidate for the job is probably Porter Goss, the Florida congressman who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, and served in the CIA's operations directorate from 1962 to 1971. Others include President Ronald Reagan's former navy secretary, John Lehman, and Richard Armitage, now Deputy Secretary of State. news.independent.co.uk