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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (241990)	7/18/2005 1:34:32 AM
From: Elroy	Respond to of 1576880

Bush planned 'to rig Iraq polls' gulf-news.com Washington: US President George W. Bush approved a covert plan to influence the outcome of Iraq's January 2005 election, but dropped it amid opposition from Congress, the New York Times reported yesterday. After debate within the White House, "the president's national security team recommended that he sign a secret, formal authorisation for covert action to influence the election," the Times said, citing "a dozen current and former government officials" familiar with the discussions. "Bush either had already signed it or was about to when objections were raised in Congress. Ultimately, he rescinded the decision," the Times said. In a statement issued in response to questions about a report in the next issue of The New Yorker, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that "in the final analysis, the president determined and the United States government adopted a policy that we would not try and did not try to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office." The statement appeared to leave open the question of whether any covert help was provided to parties favoured by Washington. The article, by Seymour M. Hersh, reports that the administration proceeded with the covert plan over the Congressional objections. Several senior Bush administration officials disputed that, although they recalled renewed discussions within the administration last fall about how the United States might counter what was seen as extensive Iranian support to pro-Iranian Shiite parties. Any clandestine American effort to influence the Iraqi elections, or to provide particular support to candidates or parties seen as amenable to working with the United States, would have run counter to the Bush administration's assertions that the vote would be free and unfettered. The article cites unidentified former military and intelligence officials who said the administration went ahead with covert election activities in Iraq that "were conducted by retired CIA officers and other non-government personnel." Despite the denials by some Bush administration officials, they said they could not rule out the possibility the United States and its allies might have provided secret aid to augment the overt support provided to Iraqi candidates and parties by the State Department.