CIA Intelligence Reports Seven Months Before 9/11 Said Iraq Posed No Threat To U.S., Containment Was Working

CIA Director George Tenet testified before Congress in February 2001 that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United States or to other countries in the Middle East.

But immediately after the terrorist attacks on 9-11, which the Bush administration has said Iraq is partially responsible for, the President and his advisers were already making a case for war against Iraq without so much as providing a shred of evidence to back up their allegations that Iraq and its former President, Saddam Hussein, helped al-Qaida hijackers plan the catastrophe.

It was then, after the 9-11 attacks, that intelligence reports from the CIA radically changed from previous months, which said Iraq posed no immediate threat to the U.S., to now show Iraq had a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and was in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration seized upon the reports to build public support for the war and used the information to eventually justify a preemptive strike against the country last March.

Oscar smiles on "Fog of War" and its warnings on Iraq

Even on Oscar night, the war in Vietnam still rages. With a billion people glued to their tubes, the old battle cry that "the whole world is watching" was once again true.

As "Fog of War" won Sunday night for best documentary, we have an AWOL president prancing in a flight suit he did not earn, and a Democratic front-runner who was a hero on both sides an issue that still deeply divides us.

Most recently we've also had "The Quiet American," a stunning portrayal of how the US actually got into that horrible war. Behind them both loom the ghosts of three men: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and the centerpiece of "Fog of War, Robert McNamara.

Kennedy is still with us because we don't know what he would have done. Bitter disputes still rage over the meaning of his withdrawal of 1000 (of 16,000) advisors just before his death, and his pledge to be out of Vietnam in 1965. Angry lawsuits have flared up---and could again---over whether Lyndon Johnson was misled, who might have done it, and why he escalated that catastrophic war in an unparalleled act of individual, party and national suicide.

Spying On UN Sec General Part Of Larger Campaign To Undermine UN Missions In Iraq

More evidence emerged Thursday about the United States and Britain's underhanded tactics aimed at undermining the United Nations Security Council as it considered a U.S.-backed resolution in launching a preemptive strike against Iraq last year.  

  Clare Short, a former member of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet, told the BBC that British intelligence officials spied on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan during the run-up to war in Iraq so it could learn how Security Council members would vote on the resolution. Short said she read transcripts produced by British spies who allegedly bugged Annan's office before the Iraq war.    

A UN spokesman said any such espionage, if true, would be illegal.    

This latest revelation is just another example of how the U.S. and Britain tried to undermine UN missions ahead of the United States' invasion of Iraq and calls into question whether intelligence used to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction-which the Bush administration cited as the key reason for waging war-was indeed "sexed up" so the U.S. could launch a preemptive strike.    

Change best achieved from ground-up, not top-down'

A vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for a message, not the presidency.

The Nader campaign platform contains many good and attractive points. His focus on improving the conditions of Americans by way of better access to health care, jobs and education is inspirational. His calls for corporate responsibility, government accountability and workers' rights are desperately needed.

However, voters should realize that his entrance into the presidential race is not a bid for the presidency, but a tool to send his message of reform to Washington and to Americans. Therefore, citizens planning to cast their votes for Ralph Nader need to understand the difference, and its impact it may have on America's future.

Surely, Nader knows that he has little or no real chance of winning the election. He is running without the backing of a political party. He is entering during a time when our country desperately needs to get rid of a growing tyrannical threat in our nation's capital. He is running in a climate of fear that is fostering a division between those who desire the comforts of familiarity and those who understand the necessity of regime

U.N. Spying and Evasions of American Journalism

Tony Blair and George W. Bush want the issue of spying at the United Nations to go away. That’s one of the reasons the Blair government ended its prosecution of whistleblower Katharine Gun on Wednesday (Feb. 25). But within 24 hours, the scandal of U.N. spying exploded further when one of Blair’s former cabinet ministers said that British spies closely monitored conversations of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq last year.

The new allegations, which have the ring of truth, are now coming from ex-secretary of international development Clare Short. “I have seen transcripts of Kofi Annan’s conversations,” she said in an interview with BBC Radio. “In fact I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking ‘Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying.’” Short added that British intelligence had been explicitly directed to spy on Annan and other top U.N. officials.

Few can doubt that some major British news outlets will thoroughly dig below the surface of Short’s charges. But on the other side of the

Mass Transit

Classification

If I didn't run...

Slamming Entitlement

Franklin Delano Roosevelt must be turning in his grave. Entitlement programs, hogwash. Medicare, phooey. Medicaid, who the hell cares? After-school programs, let them take care of themselves. Social Security, let 'em cake. The New Deal is a dead deal, who cares about the little weasels?  

According to Federal Reserve guru, Alan Greenspan, who is obviously in touch with the man and woman on the street, in the ghetto, in the old-age home, in the nursing home, living hand to mouth, he proclaims the answer to our financial woes of an overly exuberant and financially-bankrupt administration is to cut from those who need it the most.  

Diebold and Fitrakis column

Hi,

Just thought I'd say that I worked on ATM systems at a major bank when I was younger. I was there until they changed out the old 910 models for the 911 ATMs. ATMs haven't changed much in the last 15 - 20 years. Remarkably little.

For what it's worth, I wrote a scenario for the bank showing how to remove all the money from an ATM with no record. You see, the ATMs would not print either a journal entry or a receipt without a command to do so, which was independent of the command to dispense bills. Not much happened as a result except some meetings.

So even if you have printed receipts, that isn't anywhere near enough to ensure electronic voting machines are honest. You can only know if they are honest if you can easily count and compare the hardcopy record with the electronic record. There is no reason to believe that the receipt corresponds to the journal or the journal agrees with the vote recorded. They won't agree unless someone makes sure they do.

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