Saddam fooled the world. Honest he did

Remember all those chilling statements the Iraqi dictator made about, um, retaining weapons of mass destruction and, er, how he was going to launch them at us?

From the Situation Room:

"Fascinating new insight into Saddam Hussein's final days now emerging, including shocking details of his interrogation, in which he admitted he was bluffing about having weapons of mass destruction." (video)

No, me neither.

Asked whether Iraq had active stockpiles of WMD in 2003, he reportedly answered: "No, of course not. The U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a reason to go to war with us."

"He's not been very cooperative", said an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the initial interrogation.

Aye, I can believe that.

The other thing is casualties

The Los Angeles Times noted of the Iraq Survey Group report in 2004:

Saddam and his aides were convinced that their chemical and biological weapons saved the Baath party regime after a U.S.-led military coalition forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991. U.S. and allied troops halted their advance deep in southern Iraq...

Saddam and his aides told interrogators they thought Bush left him in power because U.S. officials knew of his orders to load and disperse his nerve gases and germ agents, and his orders that the weapons were to be used if U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

Reconsider now this 1994 interview in which Dick Cheney defended the decision to terminate the military advance. With modern-day occupation of Iraq a bloody disaster, a scene of crime, attention focused on the obvious: "Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? ... It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."

A lot of people are asking what changed?, yet too few people seem to provide a coherent answer. Saddam's lethal arsenal of chemical and biological weapons were an equal if not more persuasive reason not to press on; an implicit factor in evaluating potential human death. Is this what Cheney had in mind when he added:

The other thing is casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had ... 146 American's dead ... and the question for the president in terms of whether we went on to Baghdad ... was how many additional dead Americans was Saddam worth?

Enter the United Nations Special Commission. It certainly made sense for troops to withdraw as disarmament experts moved forward, taking into consideration former weapon inspector Scott Ritter's view that

disarmament was only useful insofar as it facilitated regime change. And that's what people need to understand, that this was not about getting rid of weapons that threatened international peace and security. This has been about, since 1991, solving a domestic political embarrassment. And that is the continued survival of Saddam Hussein, a man who in March 1990 was labeled as a true friend of the American people and then in October 1990 in a dramatic flip-flop was called the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler.

Attacking Iran - fine. Repression of the Iraqi civilian population - we can live with it. Annexing the oil fiefdom of Kuwait - unacceptable. Someone call a locksmith!

Iraq appeared ripe for regime change. The weapons, formerly an obstacle to achieving that goal, were long gone. As former British Secretary of State Robin Cook pointed out when he resigned his cabinet position in 2003, "it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion." If true, Cheney dare not admit it. To do so would endanger his liberty.

DUMBEX

The US Director of National Intelligence, John McConnell, has issued a new Intelligence Community Directive on captured document and media exploitation (DOMEX). Having commented on this subject before, I would draw your attention to one particular aspect of the IC directive:

D.-----POLICY

1.-----Pursuant to the IRTPA, the DNI is committed to: 1) ensuring efficient integration of IC elements and their collection, analysis, production, and dissemination activities; 2) establishing and maintaining an effective, reliable, and collaborative capability; 3) providing maximum availability of DOMEX to all customers; 4) optimizing resource utilization; 5) and establishing effective burden sharing.

2.-----Within the IC:

[...]

c.-----IC elements will leverage burden sharing, partnerships, and outside capabilities (IC, public, private, other U.S. government and foreign partners), minimize unnecessary duplication of effort, and align DOMEX standards and procedures within the IC and between the IC and other government DOMEX activities to the maximum extent possible. (Emphasis mine)

A good idea in theory, one might conclude. In practice it is reckless and dangerous. And that's because the public "burden sharing" initiative was born of political expediency. The new directive should therefore raise serious concern that we could see a repeat of October last year when documents and schematic drawings of Iraq's defunct nuclear programme were posted on the Internet.

Not that public recruitment made any sense to begin with. This avenue tends to be one-way because, somewhat surprisingly, all of the material is examined and exploited by analysts prior to publication. As was made clear during an April 2006 US House of Representatives Hearing on The Iraq Documents:

Daniel Butler: First of all, all of the documents have been looked at. They do receive a very quick triage, and as I was starting to describe, at a very tactical level they're looked at quickly. Then they receive a much more in-depth evaluation further to the rear, in the AOR, and then they go back. They are eventually entered into this database that Colonel Woods has made reference to, the Harmony database, which makes all of those documents then available to the entire intelligence community to then exploit. The database is designed in such a way that an analyst can get a very quick sense of what is in the document from a thing we refer to as "the gist", basically a linguist's—

Adam Schiff: At what level—

Daniel Butler: —summary of what is in the document.

Adam Schiff: If I could just interrupt again because I only have five minutes. What level would the decision have been made that the release of this document on the Russian potential intelligence cooperation, what level would the decision have been made that that report - unreviewed, unscrutinized and unverified - could be disclosed without injuring our relationship with Russia, or creating a whole host of other issues?

Daniel Butler: Well, the documents are scrutinized. They're scrutinized in a variety of ways. Again, during the triage process from the tactical level to the operational level and then at a strategically level back here in the US. The documents receive quite a bit of scrutiny.

The new directive is all the more perplexing because there is not a single example of a member of the public submitting valuable feedback on these documents that I am aware. Rather, because of the filtering process described in part below, the results are more often unproductive.

Daniel Butler: Our policy is to try and release as many documents as possible, and to lean forward in that regard and be biased toward release, if at all possible, recognizing that there are some— there is information in many of these documents that would be inconvenient for some constituencies; in this case perhaps the Russians, or for individuals that might be identified in documents. But our release criteria specifically protect US persons or US citizens in that regard. But we do not endeavour to protect the citizens of other governments, or in this case the Russian government.

[...]

Dana Rohrabacher: Well, I am very happy to hear that there are some people who were involved with releasing information that are patriotic people who want to make sure that they're watching out for the interests of the United States. They should not be watching out for the interests of Russia at the same level that they watch out for the interests of the United States of America.

I say only partially described because the preceding release didn't stop at defaming opponents of the Iraq war or sowing confusion by mixing in unrelated materials. Taped discussions and written accounts were frequently posted minus meeting dates, or any indication of when they may have taken place. The context and meaning of these discussions often proved ambiguous. Unbeknown to the public, the majority of them actually described operational, planning or development work during the 1980s and early 1990s. This, in turn, led to an explosion of conjecture that Iraqi scientists were still working on potent weapons programmes prior to the 2003 invasion.

Poorly chosen private partners have also proven unreliable.

And so if the director of national intelligence is genuinely committed to establishing effective burden sharing, and if his office is to learn anything from the distribution of captured "Operation Iraqi Freedom" documents, then it is that public and private loons should play no part.

Since I have returned to this topic, I may as well include this final snippet:

William Delahunt: But talking about the relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, Mr. Butler, has any of your research discovered documents relative to our relationship and interaction with the Saddam Hussein regime, from say 1982 to the Gulf War of 1990?

Daniel Butler: Congressman, I have only been involved with the policymaking with respect to document release.

William Delahunt: Colonel Woods?

Kevin Woods: Yes, sir, there are going back into the eighties. Most of it is on economic issues, attempting to find ways to get more material support or political support or economic support during the war with Iran.

It's highly unlikely that these records will ever see daylight. We still have yet to fully understand how the Central Intelligence Agency supplied Iraq with non-US origin weaponry, including Soviet arms and technology, through its secret Bear Spares military aid programme.

The truth about the dossier

Some of you may recall this report from last November regarding the discovery of a previously undisclosed 'first draft' of the British government's September 2002 Iraq dossier. Christopher Ames' follow-up appeared this month, and there is a new website (and blog) to go with it.

Wiping Israel off the map?

I stitched this video together after reading Arash Norouzi's news piece, The Rumor of the Century.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's obnoxious behaviour is not in contention - the issue at hand is what he did or didn't say, what he is or isn't advocating. There is no shortage of effigy burning and it's not unusual to hear shouts of "death to America" or "death to Israel", yet as outrageous as this behaviour continues to be, it's not certain confirmation that he called for Israel to be wiped off the map (by means of military science). The nature of this hostility predates his tenure, and so I'm inclined not to take it as a new and sudden declaration of intent.

Ahmadinejad clearly finds Israeli expansion at the expense of the Palestinian people wholly unacceptable. To this end, he talks about the need for regime change: "As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish." Since the Soviet Union was not atom-bombed out of existence, there is no necessary military connotation in what he said. Elsewhere he appears to be calling for a one-state solution with all people living side-by-side: "Our suggestion is that the five million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way." Failing this, however, Palestinians have every right to self-defence.

It is not proper to take a misquotation, twist and stretch it some more, and ignore every piece of information that invalidates it.

Alas, the Republican Party is not going to hobble humiliated to the next election with 'loser' written broadly across its forehead. American-Israeli military intervention would be a disaster for most people in the region and almost certainly delay the natural collapse of the Iranian system. In the meantime we can throw our weight behind Iranian resistance movements and campaigns like CASMII.

Update #1: BBC Editors accepted my comment. Let's hope they were listening.

Update #2: The demonisation continues. This time on BBC Radio 4's premiere comedy programme, Moral Maze. Check it out. It's ludicrous.

And men loved darkness

A document can be a dangerous thing, especially if it contains highly sensitive information that, if disclosed, could jeopardise national security. Some are withheld from inspection for less worthy reasons. A number of documents made public at the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. fall into both categories. As always, blogger eRiposte at The Left Coaster is immediately on the case. He is currently sharing his insightful analysis of them over at Firedoglake.

One particular Central Intelligence Agency product dated March 2003, and how it was reproduced for the public by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2004, raises serious questions of its former chairman Pat Roberts. "It took us a year and interviewing over 240 analysts and working with the CIA overtime in regards to redaction and what we thought should be made public and what they thought should be held in terms of national security", Roberts told BBC Newsnight after concluding the first post-war intelligence review. Recent disclosures present us with an opportunity to test his words.

Here's a snippet of the aforementioned intelligence product, selectively sanitised by the Roberts Committee:

A centerpiece of the British White Paper last fall was UK concern over Iraqi interest in foreign uranium. Given the fragmentary nature of the reporting,
CIA had recommended that the UK not use this information in their paper. (page 70)

And the same extract again, revealed at Libby's trial:

A centerpiece of the British White Paper last fall was UK concern over Iraqi interest in foreign uranium. Given the fragmentary nature of the reporting, CIA had recommended that the UK not use this information in their paper. (page 2)

The rationale for this redaction has nothing to do with national security.

I alluded to this kind of self-serving secrecy in an earlier blog post having noticed British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw being uncooperative before the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FAC). They had questioned, almost in passing, whether the United States had expressed any uncertainty in relation to the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to purchase and transport huge quantities of natural uranium from Africa to Iraq. This was the response, let me remind you, from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to questions from the FAC, 16 June, 2003.

Question: Did the "significant quantities of uranium" evidence come from a single source, or from mutually corroborating multiple sources? Was there any corroboration at all for this claim? (Did the US accept that the claim was sound?) Are you satisfied that documents on this are genuine?

Answer: The document stated on p 25 that "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This reference drew on intelligence reporting from more than one source. We understand that the IAEA acquired documents on this subject in February 2003. At no stage prior to the publication of the dossier did the UK possess or have sight of these documents. The IAEA have confirmed that the documents were not provided by the UK, contrary to some media reporting. Since the publication of the dossier, we have had the opportunity to examine the documents. Some of these documents are forgeries, others are still under consideration.

So did the United States accept that the claim was sound? Jack Straw avoided answering the question. The FAC instead had to discover the answer from a rather unexpected source.

Besieged by questions and criticisms from reporters and commentators in America over the veracity of the claim, CIA Director George Tenet was compelled to issue a press statement on 11 July. He divulged that the agency had indeed advised caution to their British colleagues over including any reference to the claim in their September 2002 dossier. This unhelpful disclosure caused a serious row and raised yet more questions of the British Foreign Secretary at home (the two countries should be working closely together to create a new narrative, not contradicting each other in public). Committee Chairman Donald Anderson, freshly informed, wrote back to Straw on 15 July and continued to press him for answers throughout the remainder of the year. These additional exchanges were published alongside their Second Report of Session 2003-2004 and have gone largely unnoticed.

[...]

4. What were the terms in which the CIA expressed its reservations to the British Government about the uranium from Africa element of the September 2002 dossier, and on what date or dates were those reservations expressed?

Just before the dossier was finalised, the CIA offered a comment noting that they did not regard the reference to the supply of uranium from Africa as credible. But the CIA provided no explanation for their concerns. UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence. A judgement was therefore made by the JIC Chairman to retain the reference.

5. Why did neither you nor your officials disclose to the Committee, in either your written or oral evidence, before the Committee published its recent report that the CIA had expressed reservations to the British Government on the uranium from Africa element in the September dossier - particularly when you were specifically asked by a member of the Committee in your public evidence on June 27 why the British Government did 'at least not put some degree of health warning' over the uranium from Africa statements in the September 2002 dossier?

British officials saw no need to put a health warning on the claim, because they were confident in the intelligence underlying it. The reference in the dossier was based on intelligence from more than one source. We had not shared this intelligence with the CIA, nor were we in a position to do so, for reasons explained during the private evidence session.

6. On receipt of the CIA's reservations, which you say in your letter were 'unsupported by explanations', about the uranium from Africa element in the September 2002 dossier, did any British official ask for an explanation of the CIA's reservations? If not, why not? If so, what was the CIA's response?

UK intelligence officials have regular exchanges with their counterparts in the CIA.

Anderson again wrote to Straw on 21 August.

I wish to follow up two of the responses which in my view could have been more helpful.

In Question 6, I asked whether, on receipt of the CIA's reservations about the uranium from Africa claim, any British official asked for an explanation; and if not, why not. You replied that "UK intelligence officials have regular exchanges with their counterparts in the CIA." May I have a more complete and informative answer to the question?

In his reply of 8 September, Straw said that he could not provide more information to the question because "exchanges between UK intelligence officials and their opposite numbers in the US are confidential." Unsatisfied with this, Anderson wrote once more on 29 October:

I am disappointed that you feel unable to supply further information on the CIA's reservations on the uranium from Africa claim. [...] If the Director of the CIA is prepared to describe the contacts between his service and the UK, I do not see why you have felt so constrained in your replies to the Committee's questions. Will you now seek the agreement of the CIA to make a full disclosure to the Committee of the exchanges which took place last year about the uranium from Africa claim?

Straw reiterated his earlier answer: "As I said in my letter of 8 September, it would not be appropriate to provide details of intelligence exchanges with CIA." He then referred Anderson to the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee - now regarded, almost everywhere, as a whitewash - which had also looked at the same issue behind closed doors. That is where the exchange ended, so far as I am aware, with the shutters firmly pulled down, perhaps to block a potentially damaging line of inquiry. And so the question still remains: What exactly did the British government know and when did they know it? The new version of their story, which basically amounts to blaming the French, does not stand up.

It is disappointing that the Butler Committee didn't push this further, and in doing so, publish in their report an accurate summary of the exchanges between both intelligence services. Instead, as eRiposte has documented and my own research corroborates, the Butler panel tried to play down the whole affair and even went out of their way to find more (flimsy) evidence, long after the fact, to support the original allegation.

Shasta Hussein, Commander of the Martians

Joseph Shahda, amateur sleuth, has identified another open source Iraq document that alludes to the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11.

"Coded Letter" to Saddam written in English Dated September 2001.

Document CMPC-2003-004963 is a "coded" handwritten letter in English from a person called Amelia Rovena Guadagno to Saddam Hussein dated September 2001. The writer of the coded letter is asking Saddam to "Nuclear the United States as required and as soon as possible as this is September 2001". In fact the document later on indicates that this letter was written on or before September 8 2001. I have no idea what this letter means, whether it is a hoax, whether it is true, but someone may find something about it that it is not clear to the naked eye.

We are given to understand that there is probably something in this "coded letter" not entirely clear to the average reader. But what exactly is it?

Click here for the original letter and here for a discernible reproduction.

As ever, Shahda nudges his readers in the wrong direction: Coded Iraqi action plan > bomb blast > United States > September 2001.

When one examines the document (ahem, I mean coded letter, wink-wink, nudge-nudge), well, it's hard not to laugh. Take just these few omitted snippets for example:

The weather was wrong again today also in Newburgh, New York. I wore the brown dress anyway!

And the moon's a balloon is not greer or geer as I proved.

And as of the Commander of the Martians I'm the only one remaining.

And just because Arnold S. did a Total Recall based on this article does not mean Naziism of Adolf is the right thing. And just because Sylvester S. did Rocky does not mean the Gottfrieds are Sly's Salvation of Judge Dredd.

Current affairs just aren't what they used to be. The USA can't even do love affairs without messing up. No pun.

They finally found the real God and what did they do? They consulted Debra. Now, understand, there are two Debra's. One is now a blonde still trying to understand who is Commander Shasta, and the other is really Cupid who went on strike even for possibly Macintosh.

Can you crack the martian code?

No indisputable proof in this sphere

Recently I tried searching for a transcript of President Jacques Chirac and President Vladimir Putin's February 2003 joint press conference. An incomplete CNN transcript was the nearest thing I could find. That's when I popped over to Google France, where I quickly discovered this missing piece:

Jacques Chirac: "As far as France is concerned, we are ready to envisage everything that can be done under UNSCR 1441. [...] But I repeat that every possibility offered by the present resolution must be explored, that there are a lot of them and they still leave us with a lot of leeway when it comes to ways of achieving the objective of eliminating any weapons of mass destruction which may exist in Iraq. I'd like nevertheless to note that, as things stand at the moment, I have, to my knowledge, no indisputable proof in this sphere."

Witness the speed with which the corporate press reported the French president's clearly stated and important reservation.