:: Has the whole world gone mad or is it just me. ::

:: Saturday, May 29, 2004 ::

Yahoo! News - Man Commits Suicide After Sex with Hen: "Man Commits Suicide After Sex with Hen




Fri May 28,10:50 AM ET



Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!





LUSAKA (Reuters) - A 50-year-old Zambian man has hanged himself after his wife found him having sex with a hen, police said Friday.




 


The woman caught him in the act when she rushed into their house to investigate a noise.



'He attempted to kill her but she managed to escape,' a police spokesman said.



The man from the town of Chongwe, about 50 km (30 miles) east of Lusaka, killed himself after being admonished by other villagers.



The hen was slaughtered after the incident.
"
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 2:16 PM [+] ::
...

A Speech That's No Joke
By BOB HERBERT


t has always been easy to make fun of Al Gore. But if there's any truth to the thunderous criticism he's turned loose on the Bush administration this week, it's time to dispense with the jokes and listen seriously to what the man is saying.

If Mr. Gore is right, the nation is faced with a crisis of leadership that is perilously close to an emergency.

If he's wrong, then all the folks who have made the easy jokes at his expense can consider themselves vindicated.

The war in Iraq, said Mr. Gore, in an interview on Wednesday, "is the worst strategic fiasco in the history of the United States. It is an unfolding catastrophe without any comparison."

In an echo of the growing chorus of criticism here and around the world, he said the war has not only damaged "our strategic interests" and isolated the U.S. from its allies, it has also made the country more — not less — vulnerable to terror.

In a widely covered speech earlier in the day, Mr. Gore said that Iraq had not become, as President Bush has asserted, " `the central front in the war on terror.' " But he said it has become, unfortunately, "the central recruiting office for terrorists."

The speech was extraordinary — blunt, colorful and delivered with the kind of passion you seldom see in politics anymore. The former vice president described Mr. Bush as incompetent and untrustworthy, and said his policies had endangered the nation.

The president, said Mr. Gore, had "planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind."

In the view of Mr. Gore (and many others), the essential problem has been the triumph in the Bush crowd of ideology over reality. The true believers knew everything better than everybody else, and the arrogance born of that certainty led, step by tragic step, to the war with no exit doors that we are locked in today.

That arrogance gave rise to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, the contempt for international agreements like the Geneva Conventions, the dismissal of concerns by some of the highest-ranking military professionals about the way a war in Iraq should be fought and the willingness of top administration figures to blow smoke in the eyes of ordinary Americans who were traumatized by Sept. 11 and worried about the possibility of further terrorist attacks.

"The same preference for ideology over reality has turned trillion-dollar surpluses into multitrillion-dollar deficits," said Mr. Gore. "And that same approach has led to the locking up of American citizens without recourse to lawyers or access to courts or even a right of their families to know they're being held in secret."

These and other matters are transforming the United States into a country that is more warlike, more brutal, less free, less just, less admirable and much less appealing than the nation that existed when Mr. Bush stepped into the presidency in January 2001.

Those who disagree with Mr. Gore should challenge him on his facts. Those who agree must look for ways to defend the honor and perhaps the very identity of the United States as we've known it.

The least serious part of Mr. Gore's speech was the part that got the most attention, his call for top officials of the Bush administration to resign. As an attention-getter, it worked.

But this was a speech in which the former vice president said: "What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations, more than the people of any other nation."

This is a time to remember the principles that made this a great nation, and to reaffirm them. I don't know what will happen in the election in November. What I know is that the nation is facing a crisis now. The Bush administration needs to step back from the abyss its ideology has dragged us to.

It may be that the president never understood what made the U.S. great. In that case, he'd be among those who could benefit most from a reading of Mr. Gore's speech. If he followed that up wit
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 3:08 PM [+] ::
...

OIL MONEY AND A SMART ENERGY POLICY DON'T MIX

By Arianna Huffington

Drivers, start your engines ˜ and empty your wallets!

As we gear up for the biggest driving weekend of the year, vacationers all
across America are coming face to face with the highest average gas prices
in history ˜ up 42 cents a gallon since 2001 ˜ and a bad case of "pump
panic," a new malady in which your heart rate instantly matches the price
of full-service high-test. Where I live, there are lots of folks
palpitating at 325 beats a minute.

At the same time car owners are having to consider taking out a second
mortgage in order to fill up their tanks, oil companies are raking in
record profits.

ConocoPhillips, for example, the United States' largest oil refiner,
recently reported its largest first quarter profits ever. And Exxon Mobil
just posted its highest first quarter refining earnings in 13 years.

Coincidentally, these companies and their oil and gas industry brethren
have a highly profitable habit of greasing the receptive palms of their
friend George Bush ˜ doling out over $3.5 million to his 2000 and 2004
presidential runs.

So for American consumers, payback is a bitch. And over two bucks a gallon
at the gas pump.

Indeed, since taking office, the Bush administration has turned the White
House into a veritable full service fueling station for Big Oil. And we're
the ones being forced to pick up the tab.

How has Bush responded to Big Oil's call to "fill 'er up"? Let me count
the ways:

1.5: the meager miles per gallon Bush has proposed increasing fuel
efficiency standards for light trucks and SUVs, which are allowed to
average 7 miles per gallon less than regular cars.

33: the number of oil refinery mergers the Bush administration has
allowed, while refusing to block a single oily takeover. Who needs all
that messy free market competition, anyway?

41: the number of top-level Bush administration officials with ties to the
oil industry, including Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Evans, Gale Norton and
Condoleezza Rice ˜ the only national security adviser in history to have
an oil tanker named after her.

100,000: the amount, in dollars, that buyers of extra large ˜ and extra
gas-guzzling ˜ SUVs are able to write off in taxes thanks to a scandalous
loophole the president signed into law.

23 billion: the number of dollars in tax incentives, tax credits and tax
deductions earmarked for the president's energy industry chums in the
Bush-backed energy bill passed by the House and awaiting a vote in the
Senate.

Infinite (or does it only seem so?): the number of times the president has
resurrected the idea that drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge would make us less dependent on foreign oil ˜ even though
such drilling would, at best, produce enough oil to meet only six months
of America's energy needs. And it would take 10 years to do even that.

Add to all this the administration's downright contemptuous and
contemptible attitude toward conservation ˜ the only surefire way to
reduce the need for more oil ˜ and it becomes unmistakably clear that when
it comes to Bush's energy policy, special-interest money has once again
trumped the public interest.

It should be the first lesson in Political Chemistry 101: Oil money and
good government don't mix. Not in Saudi Arabia, and not in the United
States.

Of course, our nation's untreated addiction to oil is costing us more than
just at the gas pump ˜ it's putting our very security at risk by leaving
us beholden to the whims of any number of oil-rich and terrorist-friendly
nations.

This continued dependence on foreign oil is why Prince Bandar was more in
the loop about plans to invade Iraq than our own secretary of state, why
the administration's much touted passion for human rights doesn't extend
to oil-rich ˜ and brutal ˜ Kazakhstan, why we're spending close to $100
million in taxpayer money to arm and train troops to defend an Occidental
Petroleum pipeline in Colombia, and, at least partly, why young Americans
continue to arrive home from Iraq (secretly, of course) in body bags.

It's time for Washington to dole out some tough love to the energy and
auto industry lobbies and help set them on the path of reform, starting
with increasing fuel efficiency standards for all cars, light trucks and
SUVs ˜ the single biggest step we can take to conserve energy. Raising
standards from the current 27.5 miles per gallon to 36 mpg would save us
roughly 2 million barrels a day ˜ about the same amount we currently
import from the Persian Gulf.

Washington must also push Detroit to radically increase its production of
hybrid cars and SUVs, and lead the way in teaming with corporate America
to rapidly accelerate investment in energy efficiency, hydrogen-based
technology, and renewable sources of energy like solar and wind. A great
model for this is the new Apollo Project, a $300 billion program proposed
by unions and environmental groups to create 3 million new jobs while
helping America achieve energy independence over the next 10 years.

And, oh yeah, there's one more number:

2: the date in November when we must make sure to vote Bush out of office
and replace him with someone whose judgment hasn't been polluted by all
that oil money spilling into his campaign coffers and then leaking into
our energy policy.

Don't let the skyrocketing numbers on the gas pump fool you: America isn't
confronting a shortage of fuel; it's confronting a shortage of leadership.

© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 8:15 AM [+] ::
...

The REAL Scandals the Media Ignore
Guess what? Rush Limbaugh ignores them, too!
by Tamara Baker

May 25, 2004 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (apj.us) -- Right now, the zone-flooders of the right-wing press intimidation sector are in Red Alert Mode.

Bush's numbers are at 41% according to the latest CBS poll, and the latest pics of feces-smeared Iraqi prisoners, and of grinning Americans posing next to dead Iraqi prisoners, aren't helping matters.

So what are the zone-flooders doing?

Distractions, of course.

They try to distract us by making us focus on Nick Berg, or on the reworked shell that may or may not have had trace amounts of sarin in it.

Here's the latest distraction from Wingnut Central: the UN Oil-for-Food "scandal". Every wingnut writer and talker has been yammering about this almost nonstop for the past week and a half. (That is, when they're not yammering about how the possible presence of sarin in one old Iraqi shell, or Nick Berg's having allegedly been beheaded by one of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's Al Qaeda enemies, somehow justifies turning the non-oil-well parts of Iraq into radioactive glass.)

The next time some Limbaugh listener or RNC tool whines about the media "ignoring the UN's Oil for Food scandal" or "ignoring the sarin warhead" or "paying more attention to fraternity pranks than Nick Berg", point out the following facts -- facts that are part of REAL scandals that really are being comparatively ignored by our nation's press:

1) As The Nation's Ian Williams points out, the UN itself, far from "covering up" the scandal, has done its best to confront it -- unlike the Bushistas, who have gone to great lengths to conceal the names of American companies involved in the scandal.

2) Poisoning millions of Iraqis and tens of thousands of our own troops with depleted uranium shells (see this document) is several orders of magnitude bigger, scandal-wise, than one reworked roadside bomb that may or may not have had sarin left over from the batches that Rummy and Cheney helped Saddam acquire back in the 1980s.

3) As Nick Berg's father reminds us, if Nick Berg hadn't been detained in Iraq by the US past his March 30 flight date, he would still be alive today.

Want some more actual scandals that the corporate US press is by and large burying on page Z565 -- when they mention them at all?

Here you go:

1) According to what our own military intelligence personnel told the International Red Cross, between 70 to 90 percent of all Iraqis in custody in Iraqi were jailed by mistake.

2) This includes three Reuters employees who were tortured for days -- even though the US forces holding them knew full well that they had no intelligence to offer them.

2a) By the way: The UK's Guardian newspaper ran this story back in January; the NYT didn't get around to running it until last week.

3) Somebody needs to ask Rush Limbaugh if "fraternity pranks" include raping Iraqi female prisoners so viciously that they commit suicide afterwards. And again, most, if not all, of these women are not guilty of any crime whatsoever.

Not one of these five stories has been on the evening news. Let's work to change that, shall we? If nothing else, we can make sure that our local papers cover them -- and on Page One, not buried back in the classified ads.

You know what to do.

 

Link: John Swift Boat Veterans John Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Eugene Gaudette Eugene Gaudette, Gene Gaudette, Chris Ruddy, Christopher Ruddy, TrustE, Jeff Koopersmith Link: Ed Gillespie Unelectable Herpes Miserable Failure Venereal Disease Stupid
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 9:12 AM [+] ::
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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Suspicion of Chalabi Deception Intensifies

Former administration favorite is believed to have fed disinformation on Hussein's weapons to intelligence agencies in at least eight nations.
By Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writer

May 23, 2004

WASHINGTON — Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime White House favorite who has been implicated in an alleged Iranian spy operation, sent Iraqi defectors to at least eight Western spy services before the war in an apparent effort to dupe them about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons programs, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.

U.S. investigators are seeking to determine whether the effort — which one U.S. official likened to an attempt to "game the system" — was secretly supported by Iran's intelligence service to help persuade the Bush administration to oust the regime in Baghdad, Tehran's longtime enemy.

Officials said other evidence indicated that Chalabi's intelligence chief had furnished Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security with highly classified information on U.S. troop movements, top-secret communications, plans of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and other closely guarded material on U.S. operations in Iraq.

The U.S. investigation into the suspected spy operation was a key reason behind Thursday's raids on Chalabi's Baghdad house and the offices of his Iraqi National Congress. Several INC members were accused of kidnapping, robbery and corruption.

Until recently, civilian leaders in the Pentagon touted Chalabi as a potential postwar leader of Iraq. The former exile leader denounced the raids as retaliation for his increasingly sharp criticism of U.S. occupation policies and operations in Iraq. He has not been accused of any crime.

It is not clear whether Iran had any role in the alleged use of the INC to provide disinformation to the West. U.S. officials say the INC may have been acting on its own when it sent out a steady stream of defectors from 1998 to 2003 with apparently coordinated claims about Baghdad's purported weapons of mass destruction.

Because even friendly spy services rarely share the identities of their informants or let outsiders meet or debrief their sources, it has only in recent months become clear that Chalabi's group sent defectors with inaccurate or misleading information to Denmark, England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden, as well as to the United States, the officials said.

As a result, the officials said, U.S. intelligence analysts in some cases used information from now-discredited "foreign intelligence sources" to corroborate their own assessments of Hussein's suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Few of the CIA's prewar judgments have been proved accurate so far.

"We had a lot of sources, but it was all coming from the same pot," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were all INC guys. And none of them panned out."

A U.S. official confirmed that defectors from Chalabi's organization had provided suspect information to numerous Western intelligence agencies. "It's safe to say he tried to game the system," the official said.

A discredited INC defector to Germany who was code-named "Curveball" was the chief source of information on Iraq's supposed fleet of mobile germ weapons factories. Another INC defector who provided similar information was deemed a liar. So was an INC defector who said he had helped build 20 underground germ weapons laboratories, a now-discredited claim that made headlines when the INC made him available to some reporters in December 2001.

The CIA was unable to interview two other supposedly senior Iraqis who spied for British intelligence in Baghdad before the war and claimed to provide detailed information from within Hussein's inner circle.

Information from both informants has now "fallen apart," one U.S. official said. "Neither had direct knowledge of what they claimed. They were describing what they had heard."

The details further tarnish Chalabi's battered image amid allegations that he shared highly classified information on U.S. operations in Iraq with his intelligence chief, identified as Aras Karim Habib.

The INC, which began as an umbrella group for Iraqi exiles, has long had an office in Tehran. Chalabi has repeatedly visited the Iranian capital, and some critics in Congress have questioned his growing ties to the ruling Shiite Muslim regime there.

A U.S. official said Chalabi "shared [information] with people who provided it" to Tehran. "There's real concern he was passing very sensitive, highly classified information to the Iranians," the official said.

Habib, who was named in an arrest warrant issued during the raid Thursday, is a fugitive. Chalabi was scheduled to appear today on several American TV talk shows.

The INC received covert funding from the CIA and about $33 million from the State Department during the 1990s. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency took over the account in 2002, paying the group $335,000 a month over the last year to gather intelligence. Pentagon officials canceled the contract this month. A DIA spokesman declined to comment Saturday afternoon.

W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence for the DIA, said Chalabi and his American-backed organization were a clear target for Iranian intelligence.

"He had complete access to senior people in the Pentagon, and then in the CPA," Lang said. "He was a participant in high-level discussions. He was head of de-Baathification, which put him in place to bar from future office any Sunni Arab he wants. If you're the Iranians, what more could you want?"

Lang said an alleged Iranian spy in Chalabi's high command had "perfect access as an agent in place. You couldn't ask for a better operation from the Iranian point of view."

Hussein's Sunni Muslim-dominated regime invaded Iran's Shiite-led theocracy in 1980, and as many as 1 million people were killed in combat and chemical weapons attacks by the time the war ended in 1988. The two regimes remained bitter enemies.

On Friday, members of the House Armed Services Committee challenged Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to explain the raid on Chalabi after so many years of support.

"This seems to be a substantial development in the war, when one of the most highly paid and trusted advisors may have deliberately misled our nation for months and years and some of our officials may have swallowed it hook, line and sinker," said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).

Myers defended the intelligence the INC had provided since the Pentagon flew Chalabi and several hundred armed followers into Iraq in April 2003. He said some of the intelligence "saved soldiers' lives."

Rep. Timothy J. Ryan (D-Ohio) demanded: "Have we been duped by a con man?"

Myers responded: "I don't have the information that can allow me to make that judgment. I think that remains to be seen, probably. But I just don't know."



:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 7:32 AM [+] ::
...

My Way - News: "Saudi Envoy: Iraq War Was 'Colonial' and About Oil

Saudi Envoy: Iraq War Was 'Colonial' and About Oil


 Email this story









May 24, 7:16 AM (ET)

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a colonial war and there were some in the United States who saw it as a means of getting their hands on Iraqi oil, a senior Saudi ambassador was quoted as saying Monday.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, ambassador to Britain and Ireland, told the Irish Independent newspaper Washington's stated aims in going to war in Iraq masked a more cynical reality.

"No matter how exalted the aims of the U.S. in that war, in the final analysis it was a colonial war very similar to the wars conducted by the ex-colonial powers when they went out to conquer the rest of the world ...," Prince Turki said.

"What we have heard from American sources they were there to remove the weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein was supposed to have acquired."

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. regional ally, opposed the war despite tensions with Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"What we read and hear from our commentators in America and sometimes congressional sources, if you remember going back a year ago, there was the issue of the oil reserves in Iraq and that in a year or two they would be producing so much oil in Iraq that, as it were, the war would pay for itself," the envoy said.

" indicated that there were those in America who were thinking in those terms of acquiring the natural resources of Iraq for America." Prince Turki said U.S. pledges to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq remained "still just aims."

"The individual Iraqi, until he can actually declare that his government is truly representative of his wishes and aspirations must still consider himself occupied," he said.

On the wider conflict in the Middle East, Prince Turki described Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as "a living martyr," persecuted by an Israel "that is ruthless and generally devoid of any human considerations (toward the Palestinians)."

Critics of Saudi Arabia, cradle of Islam and the birthplace of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the September 11 hijackers, have accused it of allowing religious militancy to flourish.

The envoy described bin Laden's al Qaeda network as "not so much an organization as a cult with a cult leader and a cult philosophy...."

"One of the main drawbacks of the operations in Afghanistan is that bin Laden has not been caught," he said. "To bring bin Laden to justice will go a long way to removing some of his mystique."









May 24, 7:16 AM (ET)

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a colonial war and there were some in the United States who saw it as a means of getting their hands on Iraqi oil, a senior Saudi ambassador was quoted as saying Monday.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, ambassador to Britain and Ireland, told the Irish Independent newspaper Washington's stated aims in going to war in Iraq masked a more cynical reality.

'No matter how exalted the aims of the U.S. in that war, in the final analysis it was a colonial war very similar to the wars conducted by the ex-colonial powers when they went out to conquer the rest of the world ...,' Prince Turki said.

'What we have heard from American sources they were there to remove the weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein was supposed to have acquired.'

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. regional ally, opposed the war despite tensions with Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

'What we read and hear from our commentators in America and sometimes congressional sources, if you remember going back a year ago, there was the issue of the oil reserves in Iraq and that in a year or two they would be producing so much oil in Iraq that, as it were, the war would pay for itself,' the envoy said.

' indicated that there were those in America who were thinking in those terms of acquiring the natural resources of Iraq for America.' Prince Turki said U.S. pledges to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq remained 'still just aims.'

'The individual Iraqi, until he can actually declare that his government is truly representative of his wishes and aspirations must still consider himself occupied,' he said.

On the wider conflict in the Middle East, Prince Turki described Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as 'a living martyr,' persecuted by an Israel 'that is ruthless and generally devoid of any human considerations (toward the Palestinians).'

Critics of Saudi Arabia, cradle of Islam and the birthplace of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the September 11 hijackers, have accused it of allowing religious militancy to flourish.

The envoy described bin Laden's al Qaeda network as 'not so much an organization as a cult with a cult leader and a cult philosophy....'

'One of the main drawbacks of the operations in Afghanistan is that bin Laden has not been caught,' he said. 'To bring bin Laden to justice will go a long way to removing some of his mystique.'
"
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 7:44 AM [+] ::
...

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-chalabi23may23,1,5485766.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Suspicion of Chalabi Deception Intensifies

Former administration favorite is believed to have fed disinformation on Hussein's weapons to intelligence agencies in at least eight nations.
By Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writer

May 23, 2004

WASHINGTON — Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime White House favorite who has been implicated in an alleged Iranian spy operation, sent Iraqi defectors to at least eight Western spy services before the war in an apparent effort to dupe them about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons programs, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.

U.S. investigators are seeking to determine whether the effort — which one U.S. official likened to an attempt to "game the system" — was secretly supported by Iran's intelligence service to help persuade the Bush administration to oust the regime in Baghdad, Tehran's longtime enemy.

Officials said other evidence indicated that Chalabi's intelligence chief had furnished Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security with highly classified information on U.S. troop movements, top-secret communications, plans of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and other closely guarded material on U.S. operations in Iraq.

The U.S. investigation into the suspected spy operation was a key reason behind Thursday's raids on Chalabi's Baghdad house and the offices of his Iraqi National Congress. Several INC members were accused of kidnapping, robbery and corruption.

Until recently, civilian leaders in the Pentagon touted Chalabi as a potential postwar leader of Iraq. The former exile leader denounced the raids as retaliation for his increasingly sharp criticism of U.S. occupation policies and operations in Iraq. He has not been accused of any crime.

It is not clear whether Iran had any role in the alleged use of the INC to provide disinformation to the West. U.S. officials say the INC may have been acting on its own when it sent out a steady stream of defectors from 1998 to 2003 with apparently coordinated claims about Baghdad's purported weapons of mass destruction.

Because even friendly spy services rarely share the identities of their informants or let outsiders meet or debrief their sources, it has only in recent months become clear that Chalabi's group sent defectors with inaccurate or misleading information to Denmark, England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden, as well as to the United States, the officials said.

As a result, the officials said, U.S. intelligence analysts in some cases used information from now-discredited "foreign intelligence sources" to corroborate their own assessments of Hussein's suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Few of the CIA's prewar judgments have been proved accurate so far.

"We had a lot of sources, but it was all coming from the same pot," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were all INC guys. And none of them panned out."

A U.S. official confirmed that defectors from Chalabi's organization had provided suspect information to numerous Western intelligence agencies. "It's safe to say he tried to game the system," the official said.

A discredited INC defector to Germany who was code-named "Curveball" was the chief source of information on Iraq's supposed fleet of mobile germ weapons factories. Another INC defector who provided similar information was deemed a liar. So was an INC defector who said he had helped build 20 underground germ weapons laboratories, a now-discredited claim that made headlines when the INC made him available to some reporters in December 2001.

The CIA was unable to interview two other supposedly senior Iraqis who spied for British intelligence in Baghdad before the war and claimed to provide detailed information from within Hussein's inner circle.

Information from both informants has now "fallen apart," one U.S. official said. "Neither had direct knowledge of what they claimed. They were describing what they had heard."

The details further tarnish Chalabi's battered image amid allegations that he shared highly classified information on U.S. operations in Iraq with his intelligence chief, identified as Aras Karim Habib.

The INC, which began as an umbrella group for Iraqi exiles, has long had an office in Tehran. Chalabi has repeatedly visited the Iranian capital, and some critics in Congress have questioned his growing ties to the ruling Shiite Muslim regime there.

A U.S. official said Chalabi "shared [information] with people who provided it" to Tehran. "There's real concern he was passing very sensitive, highly classified information to the Iranians," the official said.

Habib, who was named in an arrest warrant issued during the raid Thursday, is a fugitive. Chalabi was scheduled to appear today on several American TV talk shows.

The INC received covert funding from the CIA and about $33 million from the State Department during the 1990s. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency took over the account in 2002, paying the group $335,000 a month over the last year to gather intelligence. Pentagon officials canceled the contract this month. A DIA spokesman declined to comment Saturday afternoon.

W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence for the DIA, said Chalabi and his American-backed organization were a clear target for Iranian intelligence.

"He had complete access to senior people in the Pentagon, and then in the CPA," Lang said. "He was a participant in high-level discussions. He was head of de-Baathification, which put him in place to bar from future office any Sunni Arab he wants. If you're the Iranians, what more could you want?"

Lang said an alleged Iranian spy in Chalabi's high command had "perfect access as an agent in place. You couldn't ask for a better operation from the Iranian point of view."

Hussein's Sunni Muslim-dominated regime invaded Iran's Shiite-led theocracy in 1980, and as many as 1 million people were killed in combat and chemical weapons attacks by the time the war ended in 1988. The two regimes remained bitter enemies.

On Friday, members of the House Armed Services Committee challenged Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to explain the raid on Chalabi after so many years of support.

"This seems to be a substantial development in the war, when one of the most highly paid and trusted advisors may have deliberately misled our nation for months and years and some of our officials may have swallowed it hook, line and sinker," said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).

Myers defended the intelligence the INC had provided since the Pentagon flew Chalabi and several hundred armed followers into Iraq in April 2003. He said some of the intelligence "saved soldiers' lives."

Rep. Timothy J. Ryan (D-Ohio) demanded: "Have we been duped by a con man?"

Myers responded: "I don't have the information that can allow me to make that judgment. I think that remains to be seen, probably. But I just don't know."




:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 7:33 AM [+] ::
...

Sun 23 May 2004

US tactics 'heavy handed' says Straw memo

BRIAN BRADY WESTMINSTER EDITOR


THE FIRST cracks in Britain’s coalition with the United States over the occupation of Iraq were exposed last night by a leaked government memo which revealed deep misgivings about America’s "heavy-handed" tactics in the war-torn country.

The damning document, produced by a team working for Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, disclosed private reservations within Tony Blair’s administration about Washington’s approach to the post-war occupation.

The detailed memo, sent to senior ministers and top officials last week as a "progress report" on the occupation, stressed the need for the UK government to press the Americans to soften their approach and avoid aggressive responses "which would jeopardise our objectives".

It also talked of "the need to redouble our efforts to ensure a sensitive and sensible US approach to military operations".

The revelations shatter the government’s long-held insistence that there are no differences between Downing Street and the White House over Iraq.

The six-page memo suggests that the US tactics have particularly damaged support among ordinary Iraqis and stirred up much of the unrest which has exploded into violence in recent months.

And, in a startling admission, it also declares that the "scandal" over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Coalition-run jails has damaged the "moral authority" of Britain and the US as they struggle to justify their decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime.

"We should not underestimate the present difficulties," the document states, in a section headed ‘Problems’. "Heavy-handed US military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf some weeks ago have fuelled both Sunni and Shi’ite opposition to the Coalition and lost us much public support inside Iraq."

The memo, reported in the Sunday Times, adds: "The scandal of the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib [prison] has sapped the moral authority of the Coalition, inside Iraq and internationally."

The document also discloses that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is considering two options for troop deployments to reinforce its military presence in southern Iraq, both of which would involve extending the area patrolled by British soldiers.

Since the scandal over the brutal abuse of prisoners at the US-run Abu Ghraib facility, Blair has been scrupulously careful not to criticise the conduct of his American allies, despite growing calls at home to distance his administration from that of President George Bush over the issue.

But Straw’s team in the Foreign Office have been less restrained. The official briefing document, produced by the Iraq directorate within his department, was issued on May 19 and entitled ‘Iraq: The Medium Term’. It was circulated to the most senior figures in the government amid hectic preparations for the handover of sovereignty back to the Iraqis at the end of next month.

But while it openly discusses the private concerns of the government over the progress of the occupation, the document also provides ministers with a series of "public lines to take", apparently to cover up the concerns. The official script instructs ministers to go no further than acknowledging that "the security situation in Iraq is difficult".

The shocking disclosures about the strength of feeling over Iraq within the government will add to the growing pressure on Blair to voice the mounting criticisms of US policy to President George Bush himself.

Tory leader Michael Howard last week added to the Prime Minister’s discomfort by criticising his "new doctrine" of not making public the private advice he is giving the Americans over the worsening situation in Iraq. Blair is planning a push to win international support for a new United Nations resolution recognising the new Iraqi government. But critics claim his campaign will be more credible at home and abroad if he is seen to be prepared to stand up to Bush over the growing international concerns about the direction Iraq is taking since Saddam was removed.

The spiral of violence continued yesterday when deputy interior minister General Abdel Jabar was injured and five people killed in a car bombing near the minister’s home in Baghdad. The danger posed to civilians and armed forces in Iraq was further laid bare last night by the revelation that the UK government is paying out millions to "mercenary" security companies to protect its staff stationed in the country.

Scotland on Sunday has discovered that a private security company headed by former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind is making millions from a contract to protect Foreign Office staff working in Iraq.

ArmorGroup, the biggest security firm working in Iraq, is one of two companies that have raked in a total of £15m between them for providing round-the-clock cover in the treacherous environment of post-war Iraq during the past year.

Rifkind, the Tory candidate for Kensington and Chelsea, sparked protests from political opponents last month when he took over the chairmanship of ArmorGroup, which has 700 employees in Iraq.

Straw has admitted ArmorGroup and Control Risks are being paid a combined total of £50,000 every day to protect bureaucrats stationed in Iraq, amid mounting concerns about the safety of civilians in the war-torn country.

The fee was described as a "minuscule amount" by one government official last night. But furious MPs condemned the outlay as "appalling value for money", and claimed the government should not be ploughing money into a controversial industry that is making huge profits as part of the reconstruction effort in Iraq.

More than a dozen firms, many employing former servicemen, have been registered to work in Iraq, protecting politicians, civil servants and staff at several of the companies that have won contracts to rebuild Iraq’s shattered infrastructure.

But the security bill is swallowing up a huge chunk of the $18bn set aside by the Americans for rebuilding the country.

"Some of the firms in Iraq provide very good protection, but I am very concerned that the government is paying so much money for it," said Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay.

"There are few ground rules for what these companies are allowed to do. I would like to think our government could provide this sort of protection from its own forces, particularly when so many of the people working for these security companies have left the forces."

Private security companies have an estimated 10,000 guards in Iraq. Their lucrative trade has provoked a series of complaints about the influence of heavily armed personnel who are not under the direct control of official forces.

President Bush will make a further bid to reassure the world of his Iraq policy tomorrow. During a keynote address in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he will outline his strategy for steering Iraq to self-rule on June 30.

His preparations for the televised address were disrupted when he fell off his mountain bike during a 17-mile trek yesterday, suffering minor cuts to his face and body.



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