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Thursday, November 15th, 2007
Volume 6, No. 20
5 Articles 14 Pages
2. Congress's Unused War Powers
3. Presentation to the European Parliament
4. US Coming Around To The Truth
5. The Iraq Declaration: Racing the Truth To War
FBI Appoints National Security Higher Education Advisory Board Washington, D.C. – FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III today announced the creation of a National Security Higher Education Advisory Board. The board, which will consist of the presidents and chancellors of several prominent U.S. universities, is designed to foster outreach and to promote understanding between higher education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Board will provide advice on the culture of higher education, including the traditions of openness, academic freedom, and international collaboration. The Board will seek to establish lines of communication on national priorities pertaining to terrorism, counterintelligence, and homeland security. They will also assist in the development of research, degree programs, course work, internships, opportunities for graduates, and consulting opportunities for faculty relating to national security. Graham Spanier, President of Pennsylvania State University, will chair the Board. Spanier affirmed, "Higher education is one of our nation's greatest assets and it is critical that those entrusted with our national security better understand the valuable contributions our universities make to research discoveries, education of young adults, international collaboration, faculty and student exchanges, and the development of intellectual property." The FBI is grateful that these distinguished educators and national leaders are willing to advise on how we can work together with higher education in order to fulfill our increasingly challenging missions. Director Mueller said "As we do our work, we wish to be sensitive to university concerns about international students, visas, technology export policy, and the special culture of colleges and universities. We also want to foster exchanges between academia and the FBI in order to develop curricula which will aid in attracting the best and brightest students to careers in the law enforcement and intelligence communities. " Spanier acknowledged, "We are mindful that higher education can play an increasingly prominent role in national priorities through our research, advanced degree programs, and educational outreach." The Board will meet collectively at least three times a year in Washington, D.C., while individual presidents will often be invited to meetings of relevant working groups in the regions of their universities. The Board will begin meeting this fall. Other members of the Board include: William Brody, President, Johns Hopkins University Contact information: For the FBI For Graham Spanier, President, Penn State University |
2. CONGRESS'S UNUSED WAR POWERS
BY
GEORGE F. WILL
Americans are wondering, with the lassitude of uninvolved spectators, whether the president will initiate a war with Iran. Some Democratic presidential candidates worry, or purport to, that he might claim an authorization for war in a Senate resolution labeling an Iranian Revolutionary Guard unit a terrorist organization. Some Democratic representatives oppose the president's request for $88 million to equip B-2 stealth bombers to carry huge "bunker-buster" bombs, hoping to thereby impede a presidential decision to attack Iran's hardened nuclear facilities.
While legislators try to leash a president by tinkering with a weapon, they are ignoring a sufficient leash -- the Constitution. They are derelict in their sworn duty to uphold it. Regarding the most momentous thing government does, make war, the constitutional system of checks and balances is broken.
Congress can, however, put the Constitution's bridle back on the presidency. Congress can end unfettered executive war-making by deciding to. That might not require, but would be facilitated by, enacting the Constitutional War Powers Resolution. Introduced last week by Rep. Walter B. Jones, a North Carolina Republican, it technically amends but essentially would supplant the existing War Powers Resolution, which has been a nullity ever since it was passed in 1973 over President Richard Nixon's veto.
Jones's measure is designed to ensure that deciding to go to war is, as the Founders insisted it be, a "collective judgment." It would prohibit presidents from initiating military actions except to repel or retaliate for sudden attacks on America or American troops abroad, or to protect and evacuate U.S. citizens abroad. It would provide for expedited judicial review to enforce compliance with the resolution and would permit the use of federal funds only for military actions taken in compliance with the resolution.
It reflects conclusions reached by the War Powers Initiative of the Constitution Project. That nonpartisan organization's 2005 study notes that Congress's appropriation power augments the requirement of advance authorization by Congress before the nation goes to war. It enables Congress to stop the use of force by cutting off its funding. That check is augmented by the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits any expenditure or obligation of funds not appropriated by Congress, and by legislation that criminalizes violations of the act.
All this refutes Rudy Giuliani's recent suggestion that the president might have "the inherent authority to support the troops" even if funding were cut off. Besides, American history is replete with examples of Congress restraining executive war-making. (See "Congress at War: The Politics of Conflict Since 1789," a book by Charles A. Stevenson.) Congress has forbidden:
Sending draftees outside this hemisphere (1940-41); introduction of combat troops into Laos or Thailand (1969); reintroduction of troops into Cambodia (1970); combat operations in Southeast Asia (1973); military operations in Angola (1976); use of force in Lebanon other than for self-defense (1983); military activities in Nicaragua (1980s). In 1993 and 1994, Congress mandated the withdrawal of troops from Somalia and forbade military actions in Rwanda.
When Congress authorized the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" against those complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Congress refused to adopt administration language authorizing force "to deter and preempt any future" terrorism or aggression. The wonder is that the administration bothered to seek this language.
The administration's "presidentialists" -- including the president -- believe presidents are constitutionally emancipated from all restraints regarding core executive functions, particularly those concerning defense and waging war. Clearly they think the rejected language would have added nothing to the president's inherent powers.
Congress's powers were most dramatically abandoned and ignored regarding Korea. Although President Harry S. Truman came from a Congress controlled by his party and friends, he never sought congressional authorization to send troops into massive and sustained conflict. Instead, he asserted broad authority to "execute" treaties such as the U.N. Charter.
For today's Democrats, resistance to unilateral presidential war-making reflects not principled constitutionalism but petulance about the current president. Democrats were supine when President Bill Clinton launched a sustained air war against Serbia without congressional authorization. Instead, he cited NATO's authorization -- as though that were an adequate substitute for the collective judgment that the Constitution mandates. Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates, and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a "living Constitution." They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for war-making.
Unless and until Congress stops prattling about presidential "usurpation" of power and asserts its own, it will remain derelict regarding its duty of mutual participation in war-making. And it will merit its current marginalization.
3. PRESENTATION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
BY
KEITH BAVERSTOCK
I have, during a career of some 30 years, developed expertise in evaluating risks regarding the environmental and occupational exposure to ionising radiation and radioactive materials in many different situations. I have done this in the context of employment by the UK Medical Research Council (1971 to 1991) and the European Regional Office of the World Health Organisation (1991 to 2003), both ostensibly "independent" organisations.
Between 2000 and 2002 I examined the evidence relating to risks from the mildly radioactive depleted uranium. My concern was especially raised by the specific exposure context of inhalation of the dust particles produced when a depleted uranium munition impacts a hardened target and burns, producing fine particles of DU oxide (DUO). This material has no natural analogue and does not arise in the normal refining and processing of uranium for nuclear fuel. There is, therefore, no prior experience of exposure to this material than its use in Iraq in 1991.
According to the International Commission for Radiological Protection (ICRP), inhaled DUO would pose a hazard to the lung from radiation if it were insoluble and a chemical toxicity risk to the kidney (physiological toxicity of kidney malfunction) if it were soluble.
DUO is in fact part insoluble and part sparingly soluble. Since 1998 evidence has accrued that human cells exposed in the laboratory to low concentrations of DU exhibit changes characteristic of malignant cells and indeed, when implanted into host animals, will lead to malignancy. In these experiments it seems unlikely, given the low concentrations and the experimental conditions, that this effect is mediated by radiation, but is rather a chemically mediated genotoxicity. The non-radioactive element, nickel, produces similar effects and is an established carcinogen.
In 2001 this evidence led me to believe that inhaled DUO particles, which are capable of penetrating the deep lung (where they would be retained for long periods) posed, for a period of weeks to months, not only a radiotoxicity risk but also a chemical genotoxicity risk and potentially a synergy between the two. Thus any risk evaluated on the basis of the ICRP recommendations would be likely to underestimate the true risk.
In addition, that DU is only mildly radioactive through alpha emission, raises the possibility of a further risk route mediated by the so called "bystander effect". Here a single cell "hit" by an alpha particle sends signals to surrounding cells causing them to behave as if they had been irradiated. In circumstances where bystanders predominate (low dose exposure to alpha particles for example) the bystander effect acts to amplify the "radiation effect".
Thus, detailed examination of DUO reveals three potential risk routes in addition to the conventional radiotoxicity caused by direct irradiation, namely, chemical genotoxicity, synergy between radiation and chemical toxicities and a bystander route.
Since 2002 the evidence for these three routes has not diminished, indeed the reverse is the case. More recent studies have confirmed the earlier studies and concern about the bystander effect in radiotherapy patients continues to rise.
Furthermore, US veterans with DU embedded in their bodies as a result of friendly fire incidents and with high concentrations of DU in their urine, show further evidence of DU's mutagenic potential in their peripheral blood cells.
In my view it is highly irresponsible to continue to ignore this evidence. There is an overwhelming case for the application of the precautionary principle and that, at the very minimum, would require that DUO is cleaned up at battle sites. The problem is particularly severe in Iraq where arid climatic conditions allow DUO particles to retain the sparingly soluble component that primarily gives rise to the extra risk routes, over long periods and promotes conditions in which re-suspension and inhalation are optimised.
The organ primarily at risk is the lung, but DU dissolved in the lung will locate initially in the bone, entering via the bone marrow cavities where it can give rise to leukaemia through its chemical genotoxic potential. The kidney, through which all systemic DU is excreted is another potential target tissue, again from the genotoxic potential. Thus, exposure through inhalation to DUO has the potential to cause malignancy in a number of tissues.
A number of organisations, including the World Health Organisation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UK Royal Society, the International Commission on Radiological Protection and the European Commission Article 31 Group have, since 2001, published advice relating to the health consequences of exposure to DU. You may wonder, as I do, how such authoritative and independent Organisations, making ostensibly "independent" assessments of the situation can all ignore the evidence that exists in the scientific literature.
It is worth noting that these assessments may not in fact be truly independent. For example, staff of the UK National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) are acknowledged as contributing to the WHO and RS reports, the Chairman of the ICRP was recently the Director of the NRPB. Staff members of the NRPB collaborate with the IAEA and have been members of the Article 31 Group. It is, therefore, possible that a few individuals have influenced the outcome of these so called independent assessments.
For me, as a scientist, it is the fact that this evidence is IGNORED, as opposed to being ADDRESSED and if appropriate discredited, through rational scientific debate that is worrying. Science is about a reality that over-rides political expediency. Ignoring the evidence does not mitigate the health consequences of exposure to DU and not looking for the consequences does not mean they do not exist. Mark Danner, writing in the New York Review of Books recently, detects a currently resurgent belief that "Power, [political power] ... can shape truth: power in the end can determine reality, or at least the reality that most people will accept." He further notes that that this was stated rather directly by the "last century's most innovative authority on power", Joseph Goebbels.
I am on record as saying that "politics has poisoned the well from which democracy must drink." By this I mean that political expediency has all but eliminated truly independent research and along with that went PUBLIC TRUST. Without public TRUST democracy cannot work. In the context of risk assessment SCIENCE should provide the evidence, openly and transparently, and unalloyed with any interest in the outcome except that it be the truth. On the basis of this evidence POLITICS should decide the risk that is acceptable within the social and legal context of the time.
| BY ROBERT FISK |
| |
| Watching the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened Labrador of the American media changing overnight into a vicious Rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States. I have been experiencing this phenomenon over the past two weeks, as both victim and beneficiary. In New York and Los Angeles, my condemnation of the U.S. presidency and Israel's continued settlement-building in the West Bank was originally treated with the disdain all great papers reserve for those who dare to question proud and democratic projects of state. In The New York Times, that ancient luminary Ethan Bronner chided me for attacking American journalists who -- he quoted my own words -- "report in so craven a fashion from the Middle East -- so fearful of Israeli criticism that they turn Israeli murder into 'targeted attacks' and illegal settlements into 'Jewish neighborhoods.' " It was remarkable Bronner should be so out of touch with his readers that he did not know that craven is the word so many Americans apply to their groveling newspapers. But the moment a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam war veteran in Washington dared to suggest the war in Iraq was lost, that U.S. troops should be brought home now -- and when the Republican response was so brutal it had to be disowned -- the old media dog sniffed the air, realized that power was moving away from the White House and began to drool. On live TV in San Francisco, I could continue my critique of the U.S. folly in Iraq uninterrupted. Ex-Mayor Willie Brown exuded warmth toward this pesky Brit who tore into his country's policies in the Middle East. It was enough to make you feel the teeniest bit sorry -- though only for a millisecond, mind you -- for the guy in the White House. All this wasn't caused by that familiar transition from Newark to Los Angeles International, where the terror of al-Qaida attacks is replaced by fear of the ozone layer. On the East Coast, too, the editorials thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh, that blessing to U.S. journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story, produced another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat with revelations that U.S. commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is now out of control. When those same Iraqi gunmen last week again took control of the city of Ramadi (already "liberated" four times since 2003), the story shared equal billing on prime time television with Bush's latest and infinitely wearying insistence that Iraqi forces -- who in reality are so infiltrated by insurgents that they are a knife in the United States' back -- will soon be able to take over security duties from the occupation forces. Even in Hollywood hitherto taboo subjects are being dredged to the surface of the political mire. "Jarhead," produced by Universal Pictures, depicts a brutal, traumatized Marine unit during the 1991 Gulf War. George Clooney's production of "Good Night, and Good Luck," a devastating black-and-white account of World War II correspondent Ed Murrow's heroic battle with Sen. Joe McCarthy in the '50s -- its theme is the management and crushing of all dissent -- already has paid for its production costs twice over. Murrow is played by an actor, but McCarthy appears only in real archive footage. Incredibly, a test audience in New York complained that the man "playing" McCarthy was "overacting." Will we say this about Bush in years to come? I suspect so. And then there's "Syriana," Clooney's epic of the oil trade that combines suicide bombers, maverick CIA agents, feuding Middle East Arab potentates and a slew of disreputable businessmen and East Coast lawyers. The CIA eventually assassinates the Arab prince who wants to take control of his own country's oil while a Pakistani fired from his job in the oil fields because an American conglomerate has downsized for its shareholders' profits destroys one of the company's tankers in a suicide attack. "People seem less afraid now," Clooney said in Entertainment magazine. "Lots of people are starting to ask questions. It's becoming hard to avoid the questions." Of course, these questions are being asked because of the more than 2,000 U.S. fatalities in Iraq rather than out of compassion for Iraq's tens of thousands of fatalities. They are being pondered because the whole illegal invasion of Iraq is ending in calamity rather than success. Still they avoid the "Israel" question. The Arab princes in Syriana -- who in real life would be obsessed with the occupation of the West Bank -- do not murmur a word about Israel. The Arab al-Qaida operative who persuades the young Pakistani to attack an oil tanker makes no reference to Israel -- as every one of Osama bin Laden's acolytes assuredly would. It was instructive that Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" did not mention Israel once. So one key issue of the Middle East remains to be confronted. Amy Goodman, whom I used to enrage by claiming that her leftist Democracy Now program had only three listeners (one of whom was Amy Goodman), is bravely raising this unmentionable subject. Partly as a result, her "alternative" radio and television station is slowly moving into the mainstream. Americans are ready to discuss the United States' relationship with Israel. And the United States' injustices toward the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people. 5. THE IRAQ DECLARATION: RACING THE TRUTH TO WAR BY RICK GELL (Editor's note: On the third anniversary of its submission to the UN, the 12,000 page "Iraq Declaration" is central to how the Bush administration led the US to war in Iraq.) As the debate rages over pre-war intelligence, the work of UNMOVIC, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection team that carried out WMD inspections and reviewed the 12,000 page "Iraq Declaration," is rarely discussed. December 7, 2005 marks the third anniversary of the declaration, and its submission is central to the discussion about how the Bush administration led the country to invade Iraq. Critics are unearthing, almost on a daily basis, evidence of pre-war intelligence that challenged the existence of WMDs hidden by the administration. But in the months leading up to the war, UNMOVIC was publicly providing daily reports and regular briefings on WMD inspections -- information that was neither fixed nor hidden. The White House Iraq Group (WHIG) that included Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin read these reports and at first shifted their claims to emphasize mobile chemical labs and underground facilities. But as each day passed, and their rationale for war became less and less plausible, the WHIGs realized they were racing the truth to war. Led by Hans Blix, UNMOVIC was given 45 days after the adoption of Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002 to resume inspections, but quickly completed their first inspection in 19 days. Hans Blix, an old hand at WMD inspections in Iraq, had a team at the ready. His first stop in Baghdad, after a four year absence, was the Canal Hotel, where he re-opened the dusty offices belonging to UNSCOM United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that had been sealed awaiting the resumption of inspections in 1998. Resolution 1441 was meant to give Iraq a "final opportunity" to comply with the disarmament foreseen in Resolution 687 in 1991 and Resolution 1284 in 1999. Resolution 1441 called for "immediate, active and unconditional cooperation" and included the ability to make inspections anytime, anywhere, without announcement -- including presidential palaces. The resolution gave UNMOVIC the right to "request names of personnel currently or formerly associated with Iraq's programme for WMD and missiles" and remove them and their families from Iraq for interviews, if necessary. Their first preliminary assessment of Iraq's 12,000-page Declaration came in a briefing on December 19th to the Security Council. Reaction was mixed. I spoke with Hans Blix in preparation for this article about the 12,000 page declaration and he recounted how the Iraqis complained about "disproving the negative." In retrospect, he suggested 30 days was not nearly enough time for Iraq to fully describe their entire petrol-chemical and industrial infrastructure. But Hans Blix also had no illusions. As he reported "during the period 1991-98, Iraq submitted many declarations called full, final and complete. Regrettably, much in these declarations proved inaccurate or incomplete or was unsupported or contradicted by evidence." Blix found much of the document a rehash and re-submission of previous materials and lacking the supportive evidence that he and UNMOVIC considered essential to support Iraq declarations that no WMD's existed. While the Iraqis had become fully cooperative with regard to prompt and immediate access to sites -- anywhere at anytime, they were still playing a game of cat and mouse with respect to supporting documents -- the budgets, destruction records, transportation notes and personnel lists that could answer open questions about anthrax programs, VX and other weapons. The December 19 report to the Security Council mentions an allocation of $32 million. Hans Blix was quick to point out that UNMOVIC had limitless funds, "hundreds of millions if necessary," and was just getting up to speed. Part of the resolution included a seven percent share of funds from the now discredited Oil for Food funds. Biologists, chemists and other inspectors were taking refresher courses and engaging in mock inspections. Airplanes were on the tarmac, and UNMOVIC was ready to hit the ground running. After 60 days, in the January 27, 2003 briefing to the Security Council, Hans Blix reported that "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance -- not even today -- of the disarmament that was demanded of it." There were still major issues -- from an accounting discrepancy of 6,500 chemical bombs, to the discovery of 122mm chemical rockets, to the lack of convincing evidence for the destruction of 8,500 liters of anthrax, to a refurbished missile production infrastructure, to the slow release of personnel lists. But there was good news. The UNMOVIC staff now had 260 members from 60 countries and an "inspection apparatus that permits us to send multiple inspection teams every day all over Iraq, by road or air," Blix affirmed. Three hundred inspections of over 230 sites were completed, eight helicopters in use, and advanced chemical and biological analytical facilities were recently installed in Baghdad. The German government was sending unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles and experts to run them. New Zealand was contributing medical and communication teams. New experts were being trained in Vienna. The WHIGs couldn't have been pleased. Dick Cheney, Mary Matalin and Karl Rove are nothing if not shrewd. And the thought of a UN sponsored, internationally staffed, technologically advanced inspection team in place throughout Iraq was a bane to conservatives and not their vision of foreign policy. It could threaten their ultimate goal of regime change. As each day passed, the chances of finding huge stockpiles and weapons facilities diminished. Their argument for invasion would disappear. The clock was working against them. On February 14th, UNMOVIC reported to the UN that 200 chemical and 100 biological samples had been analyzed and concluded that "the results to date have been consistent with Iraq's declaration." Inspections were conducted without notice and full cooperation -- "industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centers, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites .... At certain sites, ground-penetrating radar was used to look for underground structures or buried equipment." In a word -- thorough. For the first time, Hans Blix included a section on "intelligence" in his briefing, discussing the role of foreign intelligence on the inspection process and Colin Powell's now infamous speech of February 5, 2003 to the United Nations. Hans Blix politely acknowledged intelligence agencies must protect sources and methods, and be assured information provided will be handled in the strictest confidence. He stated, "UNMOVIC had achieved good working relations with intelligence agencies and the amount of information provided has been gradually increasing." Gradually increasing? The world was preparing to go to war and countries were holding intelligence back? Hans Blix explained in a follow up interview last week that foreign intelligence was only provided to Dimitri Perricos, his successor at UNMOVIC, and the deputy in charge of inspections at the time, along with another senior executive at the agency. Blix estimated "all in all about 100 sites suggested from all intelligence agencies together and that some three dozen actually were visited in the months we were present in Iraq." Blix referred me to the Butler Report, which closely examined the role of British intelligence. The British had given UNMOVIC 30 pieces of intelligence, which related 19 different sites. The report states UNMOVIC visited seven sites and found Volga engines (long-range missile components) at one, nuclear scientific documents at another and conventional ammo at a third. In Blix's recollection, UNMOVIC only made findings at three sites provided by intelligence, "the conclusion from Butler would be that all three were British and none was from the US." I followed up with Dimitri Perricos last week, who confirmed that UNMOVIC was only able to follow-up on 40% of the sites provided by intelligence before the war began, but emphasized these searches were not random, and as logic would dictate, focused on credible and high-priority sites first. He would not reveal what percentage of the intel sites were provided by the US government. Ninety days into the inspection process in 2003, and troops had started amassing at the Iraqi border. Was the threat of war working to improve the Iraqis cooperation with Blix's inspection process? Absolutely. But going from threat to war is a huge step. One has to assume the administration was feeding UNMOVIC every morsel of intelligence they had as the war got closer. If Donald Rumsfeld knew "exactly" where the weapons of mass destruction were located, he would want them unearthed before an invasion. It would be immoral and insane to leave known weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands and then attack, putting the troops at risk. Why hold any intelligence back if it could reveal a site and confirm the argument for war? There is only one possible explanation. The WHIGs knew the intelligence was coming up empty, had no more intelligence to provide UNMOVIC and needed to act. To this day Hans Blix says he does not know whether there were other weapons sites he was not told about. After 90 days and hundreds of inspections, what would the "conservative" approach have been? In early March French Mirage aircraft were scheduled to join the inspection effort and German drones were ready to go. Millions of dollars in equipment was arriving in Cyprus and the Russians were offering an Antonov aircraft with night vision capabilities. As Blix reported, UNMOVIC was "still expanding its capabilities" with new experts "from 22 countries, including Arab countries" ready to join the effort. On March 7, 2003, UNMOVIC gave the last briefing before the start of the war. Hans Blix continued to complain about the lack of supporting documents provided by Iraq. UNMOVIC had investigated US claims of mobile biological trucks and underground facilities, found no evidence of their existence and were ready to double the search effort with their unlimited budget. Disposal sites of VX missiles were being re-excavated; private interviews were finally beginning in earnest. Hans Blix stated in the briefing, "Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyze documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months." A "work programme" was scheduled to be delivered on March 18th 2003 that would outline UNMOVIC's "proposed list of key remaining disarmament tasks." UNMOVIC was evacuated on the day the document was delivered. The war started the very next day. Forget Joe Wilson, Colin Powell, Ahmad Chalabi and Curveball. Simply look, as they say, at the facts on the ground. After 700 go-anytime inspections at over 500 go-anywhere sites, many actually suggested by US intelligence sources, it's proof positive that the WHIGS were not interested in reality as they made their case for war. As Hans Blix told me, "The results should have told them the intelligence was not that good." He was being kind. No, Cheney and the WHIGs knew their intel was bad, WMDs and huge weapons programs a distant memory and their publicly stated reason for going to war, fading fast. Before the inspection team could reach full strength, before offices in Basra could be opened, before hundreds of Iraq-personnel interviews could take place, before Russian night-vision aircraft could arrive, before a work program could be delivered, before the 12,000 page Iraq Declaration could be fully vetted, before a mere 100 days of inspections could be completed, the plug was pulled and the best solution for dealing with Iraq's WMD threat ended. |
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