Subject:
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Newsbits that bite
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 8 Jun 2003 22:14:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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300 times
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Why America is waking up to the truth about WMD
http://www.sundayherald.com/print34463
Senior CIA officials have distanced themselves from Rumsfeld’s claims that WMD
posed an imminent threat. They say these claims are based on information passed
directly to Rumsfeld’s office by Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National
Congress and a Pentagon favourite to become the next Iraqi leader. But the CIA
regarded his sources as deeply suspect and said his claims were largely based on
hearsay from other defectors with vested interests in regime change.
The big question now is: was Bush was duped himself, or did he dupe the people
into believing war was necessary? Some Democrats, sniffing blood, are poised to
attack. Bob Graham, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has
claimed that before the war the administration embarked on ‘a pattern of hiding
information’. Classified evidence that supported its claims about weapons was
made public, he said. ‘But as a member of the Intelligence Committee I saw much
evidence that didn’t support its case,’ he added. ‘That evidence was never
declassified.’
Senior U.S. Officials Defend U.S. Iraq Intelligence
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-weapons-usa.html?pagewanted=print&position=
But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, top Armed Services Committee Democrat, told
NBC’s Meet the Press there was `too much evidence that intelligence was shaded,
that called something which was possible, such as the presence of weapons of
mass destruction, or even probable, was turned into certainty over and over and
over again by the administration.‘’
Revealed: the secret cabal which spun for Blair
http://www.sundayherald.com/print34491
Johnson said that to describe Saddam as an ‘imminent threat’ to the West was
‘laughable and idiotic’. He said many CIA officers were in ‘great distress’ over
the way intelligence had been treated. ‘We’ve entered the world of George
Orwell,’ Johnson added. ‘I’m disgusted. The truth has to be told. We can’t allow
our leaders to use bogus information to justify war.’
Just What Does America Want to Do With Iraq’s Oil?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/weekinreview/08OBRI.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Attention shoppers: Iraqi oil is for sale.
On Thursday, exactly two weeks after the United Nations Security Council lifted
13 years of economic sanctions against Iraq and gave the United States a firm
grip on one of the world’s most bounteous oil spigots, Baghdad put 10 million
barrels of crude up for bid.
Although Baghdad is still mired in crime and no weapons of mass destruction have
surfaced in Iraq, Washington is helping market Iraqi oil with all due haste. A
former Shell Oil executive heads a panel supervising Iraq’s oil fields and crude
will now be sold directly to refiners, thus eliminating a middleman role once
dominated by Russian oil traders. French refiners also once enjoyed a healthy
foothold in Iraq before their government wound up on the wrong side of the
United Nations war debate, giving a leg up to enthusiastic American and British
refiners, which couldn’t deal directly with Iraq during the sanctions era.
Call it a coup de petrole.
And since Iraq has the world’s second-largest pool of known oil reserves, the
Bush administration’s handling of the money that flows from those fields is
certain to ripple far beyond Iraq’s borders - particularly because some
two-thirds of Iraq’s estimated oil bounty remains untapped.
Expanding role of Defense Department spurs concerns:
Some say officials overstep bounds, limit other agencies
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/159/nation/Expanding_role_of_Defense_Department_spurs_concernsP.shtml
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Defense’s responsibilities have grown beyond
anything that military commanders had imagined at the end of the Cold War,
according to national security specialists; some have voiced worry that the
department’s expanding roles could tax the Pentagon’s resources or compromise
some civilian authorities.
Nearly 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is no more talk about a
budgetary ‘‘peace dividend’’ or trimming US forces. The US military is not only
operating in more places around the world than at any other time since World War
II, but it has also expanded into areas previously reserved for other government
agencies: establishing a new intelligence unit, launching a homeland defense
command, and exerting growing influence in foreign policy.
Deficits and Dysfunction
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/magazine/08WWLN.html?pagewanted=print&position=
I have belonged to the Republican Party all my life. As a Republican, I have
served as a cabinet member (once), a presidential commission member (three
times), an all-purpose political ombudsman (many times) and a relentless
crusader whom some would call a crank (throughout). Among the bedrock principles
that the Republican Party has stood for since its origins in the 1850’s is the
principle of fiscal stewardship -- the idea that government should invest in
posterity and safeguard future generations from unsustainable liabilities. It is
a priority that has always attracted me to the party. At various times in our
history (especially after wars), Republican leaders have honored this principle
by advocating and legislating painful budgetary retrenchment, including both
spending cuts and tax hikes.
Over the last quarter century, however, the Grand Old Party has abandoned these
original convictions. Without ever renouncing stewardship itself -- indeed,
while talking incessantly about legacies, endowments, family values and leaving
‘‘no child behind’’ -- the G.O.P. leadership has by degrees come to embrace the
very different notion that deficit spending is a sort of fiscal wonder drug.
Like taking aspirin, you should do it regularly just to stay healthy and do lots
of it whenever you’re feeling out of sorts.
-- Hop-Frog
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