Antiwar.com Blog

Holy cow, who’s leaking to the Daily News today? Here’s another shocker they just broke:

It was called the White House Iraq Group and its job was to make the case that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and biochemical weapons.

So determined was the ring of top officials to win its argument that it morphed into a virtual hit squad that took aim at critics who questioned its claims, sources told the Daily News.

One of those critics was ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who debunked a key claim in a speech by President Bush that Iraq sought nuclear materials in Africa. His punishment was the media outing of his wife, CIA spy Valerie Plame, an affair that became a “side show” for the White House Iraq Group, the sources said.

The Plame leak is now the subject of a criminal probe that has seen presidential political guru Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, hauled before a grand jury.

Both men were members of the group, also known as WHIG. From late 2002 through mid 2003, it was locked in a feud with officials inside the CIA and State Department over claims Saddam tried to buy “yellow cake” uranium in Niger to build nukes, a former Bush administration and intelligence sources told The News.

“There were a number of occasions when White House officials or Vice President [Cheney’s] staffers, or others, wanted to push the envelope on things,” an ex-intelligence official said. “The agency would say, ‘We just don’t have the intelligence to substantiate that.'” When Wilson was sent by his wife to Africa to research the claims, he showed the documents claiming Saddam tried to buy the uranium were forgeries.

“People in the Iraq group then got very frustrated. It was a side show,” said a source familiar with WHIG.

Besides Rove and Libby, the group included senior White House aides Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James Wilkinson, Nicholas Calio, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley. WHIG also was doing more than just public relations, said a second former intel officer.

“They were funneling information to [New York Times reporter] Judy Miller. Judy was a charter member,” the source said.

The wheels are coming off the Bush war bus.

What if they have a trial and no witnesses come?

THE chief judge trying Saddam Hussein and seven others on charges of crimes against humanity said today the main reason why the trial has been adjourned was because many witnesses were too afraid to turn up.

Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin said about 30 or 40 witnesses had not come to Baghdad for the trial, which took place in a heavily defended building inside Baghdad’s fortress-like Green Zone compound.

“The main reason is the witnesses did not show up,” Judge Amin said. “They were too scared to be public witnesses. We’re going to work on this issue for the next sessions.”

The trial has been adjourned until November 28.

It’s kind of takes the show out of your show trial when you hold it in the middle of a war zone occupied by foreign troops. And Saddam studied up his dialogue and everything!

“Sparked by today’s Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney’s office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”
— US News and World Report, October 18, 2005

“If Libby is implicated as having anything to do with Plame’s ‘outing,’ then that, in turn, implicates Cheney, who must take responsibility. The vice president’s resignation, under these circumstances, is a distinct possibility.”
— “L’Affaire Plame,” by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, October 3, 2003

Yet another reason to remember why Antiwar.com is absolutely indispensable.

Condoleeza Rice is telling Congress today that the Bush strategy for Iraq is the “successful” one they used in Afghanistan.

Here’s Condi:

“Our strategy is to clear, hold, and build,” she said. “The enemy’s strategy is to infect, terrorize, and pull down.”

I couldn’t find a mention anywhere that indicated what the end to this was supposed to be. However, shooting for the Afghanistan benchmark is probably a good idea, as the two countries have some clear similarities already.

Saddam Hussein’s trial has begun. As of 7am EST Wednesday, you can tune into any news channel and see idiots say “spider hole” repeatedly over near-silent tape-delayed footage.

Doofus on MSNBC explains that the tape delay is “in case there’s a outburst or something… or a security incident.”

No explanation for the 1/20th volume behind them so far, or news of whether the Iraqis can actually watch it.

Frontline ran a very detailed story of how secretary of defense Rumsfeld and his jack-booted Gestapo lackey General Geoffrey Miller “Gitmoized” the interrogations of detainees in Iraq. Their website has great backround, such as “Examining the Paper Trail“, video of Camp Delta, lawyers defending torture with make-believe TV timebomb senarios and many interviews including the groundbreaking story of US Army interrogator Spc. Tony Lagouranis (Ret.) who admits he tortured the hell out of Iraqis and tells us:

“Well hypothermia was a widespread technique. I haven’t heard a lot of people talking about that, and I never saw anything in writing prohibiting it or making it illegal. But almost everyone was using it when they had a chance, when the weather permitted. Or some people, the Navy SEALs, for instance, were using just ice water to lower the body temperature of the prisoner. They would take his rectal temperature to make sure he didn’t die; they would keep him hovering on hypothermia. That was a pretty common technique.

A lot of other, you know, not as common techniques, and certainly not sanctioned, was just beating people or burning them. Not within the prisons, usually. But when the units would go out into people’s homes and do these raids, they would just stay in the house and torture them. Because after the scandal, they couldn’t trust that, you know, the interrogators were going to do “as good a job,” in their words, as they wanted to.”

A couple of bad apples, huh? Oh, well, go ahead and freeze ’em solid, as long as their organs don’t explode.

The entire show is to replay on the Frontline website Wednesday at 12 noon EST.

Oh, yeah, and don’t forget as you read and watch that the DoD eventually admitted to the Red Cross that “70-90 percent” of the Abu Ghraib prisoners were entirely innocent.