New York Times
US withdraws 400 weapon hunters from Iraq
Thu Jan 8 17:06:03 2004
64.140.159.136

US withdraws 400 weapon hunters from Iraq

WASHINGTON - January 7 2003: (New York Times)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5487.htm

The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government officials.

The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.

A separate military team that specializes in disposing of chemical and biological weapons remains part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has been searching Iraq for more that seven months at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. But that team is "still waiting for something to dispose of," said a survey group member.

Some of the government officials said the most important evidence from the weapons hunt might be contained in a vast collection of seized Iraqi documents being stored in a secret military warehouse in Qatar. Only a small fraction have been translated.

A report published Wednesday in The Washington Post cited a previously undisclosed document that suggested that Iraq might have destroyed its biological weapons as early as 1991. The report said investigators had otherwise found no evidence to support American beliefs that Iraq had maintained illicit weapons dating from the Persian Gulf war of 1991 or that it had advanced programs to build new ones.

The report also documented a pattern of deceit that was found in every field of special weaponry. It said that according to Iraqi designers and foreign investigators, program managers exaggerated the results they could achieve, or even promised results they knew they could not accomplish — all in an effort to appease Saddam Hussein. In some cases, though, they simply did it to advance their careers, the report said, or preserve jobs or even conduct intrigues against their rivals.

Senior intelligence officials acknowledged in recent days that the weapons hunters still had not found weapons or active programs, but in interviews, they said the search must continue to ensure that no hidden Iraqi weapons surfaced in a future attack.

"We worry about what may have happened to those weapons," Stuart Cohen, the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said in an interview broadcast late Tuesday on the ABC News program "Nightline." "Theories abound as to what may have happened."

The search for Iraqi weapons remains "the primary focus" of the survey group, a senior Defense Department official said. But he acknowledged that most of the dozens of new linguists and intelligence analysts to join the team had recently been given assignments related to combating the Iraqi insurgency rather than to the weapons search.

David Kay, the head of the survey group, made it known last month that he might leave his post. Government officials said Wednesday that he had not reached a decision but that both he and his top deputy, Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, were in Washington, in part to discuss what direction the hunt should take.

"I am sure that if they had found important evidence, we would know about it," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who has said the administration exaggerated the Iraqi threat.

Bill Harlow, the top spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, said Wednesday that "the team needs to compete its work, and no one should jump to any conclusions before it has an opportunity to examine all of the circumstances."

American intelligence officials who described the seized documents said they hoped the documents might eventually help to unravel the mystery of whether Iraqi weapons remained hidden or whether they were destroyed long before what the Bush administration initially portrayed as a mission "to disarm Iraq."

© The New York Times Company
====================================

Saddam's presidential secretary ''dies'' in US custody:

Unofficial Iraqi sources told Al Bawaba Wednesday that Abed Hamoud al-Tikriti, presidential secretary of former leader Saddam Hussein died two days ago while in US custody.
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=267481&lang=e&dir=news

===

===

White House 'distorted' Iraq threat :

These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5486.htm

===

New Iraq report undermines Bush doctrine:

New evidence suportst the theory that western intelligence and United Nations inspectors were told the real extent of Iraq's programmes of weapons of mass destruction back in 1995 by the most senior defector from Iraq during the 1990s - General Hussein Kamel.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5485.htm

===

WMD In Iraq: Evidence and Implications:

Summary of New Carnegie Report
http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/IraqSummary.asp?from=pubdate

===

The domination effect :

Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, the US has sought not just to influence but to control all information, from both friend and foe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1118402,00.html

===

In case you missed it:

The Lie Factory :

A new investigation examines how a secret Pentagon intelligence unit led the nation to war by pushing disinformation and faulty intelligence to produce wildly exaggerated threats posed by Iraq.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5398.htm

===

UK: The totality is – the Prime Minister lied:

Right. OK then! Now I get it (slap forehead). How could I have been so slow on the uptake? I understood until yesterday that the Prime Minister had been caught out in a great big fat steaming smoking-pants lie.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/01/08/do0802.xml

===

Blair promises to quit if Kelly report shows he lied to MPs:

Tony Blair's role in the naming of Dr David Kelly was thrust back into the spotlight yesterday when he said he would resign if the Hutton Inquiry showed he had lied to Parliament.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/08/nkell08.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/08/ixnewstop.html

http://tinyurl.com/3a9ec

===

Welcome To Richard Pearle's America: Quotes from new book, "An End to Evil":

A national identity card that registers the bearer's name and biometric data, like fingerprints or retinal scans or DNA. We should develop detailed plans for a preemptive strike against North Korea's nuclear facilities.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5490.htm

===

In case you missed it:

Despotism & Democracy :

Video: Explains how societies and nations can be measured by the degree that power is concentrated and respect for the individual is restricted. Where does your community, state and nation stand on these scales?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4971.htm

===

Troops in Iraq suffer huge risk of injury:

Nearly as many U.S. soldiers were wounded in Iraq last month as during the entire six-week period of major combat operations, according to Defense Department statistics tracked by a leading research organization.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/155731_iraq08.html

===

Disabled American Veterans Say U.S. Restricting Visits To War Wounded:

"The policies of the Department of Defense citing the Privacy Act and security are preventing our skilled representatives from carrying out our congressionally chartered mission."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=126-01072004

===

It shouldn't happen to a vet :

Uncle Sam needs soldiers to protect his pipelines in Iraq - but they shouldn't expect his help when it's all over
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1117569,00.html

===

Father speaks of son's death in Iraq:

Through an interpreter and sometimes speaking in English with a heavy accent, the Escondido resident discussed his recent trip to Iraq and the death of his 20-year-old son, Lance Cpl. Jesus Alberto Suarez del Solar.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/01/08/news/top_stories/1_7_0420_33_30.txt

===

Ordered To Die: An Iraqi mother asks,

"Pray tell me have you ever seen or heard about a terrorist act that is considered any uglier than this crime, which was followed by crushing the car and levelling it to the ground by American military vehicles?"
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2004_01_01_healingiraq_archive.html#107355465026355767

===

Amnesty confusion angers relatives in Iraq :

There were angry scenes outside a Baghdad prison this morning as hundreds of Iraqis gathered in the capital to wait for relatives to be freed from prison under a new US amnesty.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1118487,00.html

===

Report: Saddam Hussein Has Cancer
http://www.novinite.com/newsletter/print.php?id=29632

===

Journalists Under Fire: The Death of José Couso in Baghdad:

"The death of José Couso was a premeditated crime, an attack on journalists to prevent us from telling the story of something the US has tried to hide from the start of the war: the slaughter of civilians."
http://www.counterpunch.com/hollander01082004.html

===

Naked City: Patriot II, Piece by Piece:

President George W. Bush signed into law a bill that will allow the federal government broad access to individuals' financial records without a court order. This allows the government to sidestep decades-old financial privacy laws, all in the name of preventing terrorism.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5489.htm

===

Miami federal court has 'secret docket' to keep some cases hidden from public:

In its Supreme Court brief, the media group called the secret jailing of an Algerian-born waiter "perhaps the most egregious recent example of an alarming trend toward excessive secrecy in the federal courts"
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-csecret08jan08,0,2167647.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

http://tinyurl.com/ytwpp

===

US extremists to be sentenced over bomb plot :

Three Americans are due to be sentenced next month for their involvement in a plot to explode a cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands of people.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1118162,00.html

See Also: WMD Plot in East Texas:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5350.htm

===

Britons will need visas to travel to US :

In nine months' time, thousands of Britons travelling to the US will have to buy a visa and be fingerprinted upon entering the country
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,7445,1118611,00.html

===

Passport rules baffle travellers:

Accuracy of terror watch list questioned: Biometric passports contain a microchip with information that allows a machine or its operator to verify that the bearer is its rightful owner, a Foreign Affairs spokesperson said yesterday. Such a chip may include face-recognition, iris-scan or fingerprint data.
http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1073517012185&call_page=TS_World&call_pageid=968332188854&call_pagepath=News/World&pubid=968163964505&StarSource=email

http://tinyurl.com/2vl6k

===

Green Party "Terrorists":

The agents took full eye-open pictures of Stuber with a digital camera. Then they asked him details about his family, where he lived, who he ever knew, what the Greens are up to, and other questions.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14884

===

I Believe:

Oh, I so want to believe that our government didn’t lie to us, but I heard the lies with my own ears. I want to believe that there was a reason – a good and honorable reason - that we sent our children to battle
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5491.htm

===

Nearly half of New York City’s homeless are children:

New York City began the New Year with the largest numbers of men, women and especially children crowding into its shelters since the city began keeping records 20 years ago
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/nyc-j07_prn.shtml

===

This web site represents the effort of one person.

I need your help to offset the costs associated with site hosting and bandwidth usage. If you find this site informative please help by clicking here
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/support.htm

===


Revealed: how global warming will cause extinction of a million species:

A quarter of known land animals and plants, more than a million species, will eventually die out because of the global warming that will take place over the next 50 years, the most important study of its kind has concluded.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=479080

===

Jimmy Breslin : No Reason for Coyotes to Worry:

Rodriguez wanted to believe Bush so much that he nearly clapped. Then Bush said they would get this visa as long as they had a job waiting for them in America.
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nybres083616495jan08,0,3321726.column

===

Israel: Ya'alon: we may have to attack Syria again:

Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon warned that recent Syrian overtures towards Israel, Turkey and the US – made under duress – mean nothing, and that the IDF may have to strike at Syria again.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1073448206290&p=1008596981749

http://tinyurl.com/2f8nx

===

How reality is distorted to serve an agenda :

These slick PR campaigns ensure that the US is presented as a neutral party trying to find a solution, while ignoring the facts that our government paid $6 billion to fund Israeli policies in 2003 and vetoed countless UN Security Council resolutions that would have put the Israeli government to task for violating basic human rights.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5488.htm

===

Sounding the Alarm About Israel's Demographic Crisis :

When Arnon Soffer first issued his warning in the 1980s — that Arabs would outnumber Jews in Israel and the occupied territories by around 2010 — he was widely dismissed as a crackpot Jeremiah. Now the Israeli public and its leaders appear to have caught up with him.
http://www.forward.com/issues/2004/04.01.09/faces.html

===

GIs in Iraq Scoff at Re-Enlistment Bonus :

At a checkpoint on the barren plain east of Baqouba, word of a new U.S. Army plan to pay soldiers up to $10,000 to re-enlist evoked laughter from a few bored-looking troopers.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040107_1247.html